By Noriko Nakada
Time works in such interesting ways, especially right now.
In early March, when I could see the shut down coming, I imagined staying at home for weeks at a time. Trusting our fridge and pantry would hold, I hoarded books. I’d have time to read! I’d read all the books! I bought more so I wouldn’t run out. So far this quarantine has lasted twelve books.
On March 8, 2020, I ran the LA marathon’s 26.2 miles in under five hours. I thought I’d keep running during the safer at home order. What a great way to recover and stay in shape. So far, I’ve run 75 total miles in quarantine.
Time is funny during a pandemic. When school was in session for my students, my children, and for me, I woke up early, got in hours and hours of teaching, and planning, and grading. We were so busy, but it felt like wheels spinning in a cage. School has been out for six weeks. The wheels are still spinning.
There is time to write this summer. Time to submit work, revise, query, edit. Two hours each morning: Women Who Submit Writing Alone Together for 120 minutes. Sometimes those minutes are enough. Sometimes the minutes stretch into 180 or 240. Suddenly, there aren’t enough minutes to do it all.
If you record a reading and it’s less than a minute, it might be too short. If you record a reading of an essay and it’s longer than a minute, it might be too long. Everyone wants recorded readings. Time them carefully.
The pendulum of time swings back and forth. One day, I do absolutely nothing. The day stretches. The kids turn rotten and the avocados become overripe. I fill the day with nothing and nothing and more nothing. I read the news and fill with anxiety. I do nothing. The next day I’m up early: exercise, make breakfast, start bread, drink coffee, write, revise, help kids with their work, edit, read, fold dough, make lunch, check the news, make donations, answers emails, play with kids, bake cupcakes with the kids, pull weeds, write a letter, make dinner, bake bread, go for a walk, wipe down the counters again, write, check the news, read, sleep. And then the pendulum swings back and again and again and again and again.
In Ruth Ozeki’s novel A Tale for the Time Being, she writes of the now: “But in the time it takes to say now, now is already over. It’s already then.” How quickly the now becomes then. As we swim in this river of days, they flow past us and disappear. We float on these moments, however we measure them: in minutes or hours, in pages or poems. The days rush into weeks and weeks into months. July is almost over and August will arrive. 2020 is already half over. It’s taken about three minutes to read this. Thanks for sharing your time.
Now, what do we do next?
Noriko Nakada writes, parents, and teaches eighth grade English at Emerson Middle School in Los Angeles. She is the author of the Through Eyes Like Mine memoir series. Excerpts, essays, and poetry have been published in Kartika, Catapult, Meridian, Compose, and Hippocampus. She is spending her time in quarantine perfecting sourdough, biscuits, and pie crust. She has two kids so she answers approximately three thousand questions a day.