By KCY

The other day my daughter asked me what time is. I pulled out my phone and searched for “time”, finding the Merriam-Webster dictionary definition.

“It’s the measured or measurable period during which an action, process, or condition exists or continues,” I read to her off the screen. No joke, I really did.

“I don’t get it mommy,” she said, her bright four-year-old eyes full of confusion. I scooped her onto my lap and hugged her close as I formulated a more age-appropriate response and one I actually could understand, too! But what was time? 

I realized that time meant different things to me during different parts of my life. One thing, though, had remained consistent and it’s that I’d always been anxious and worried about time. 

When I was younger, I worried time wasn’t going fast enough. I couldn’t wait to be ten years old when I was six. I couldn’t wait to leave home and go away to college. Then I couldn’t wait to come home after I finished college.

As I became older, I no longer worried time wasn’t progressing fast enough. Now I was concerned I wouldn’t achieve my goals “in time.” I needed to finish medical school by the age of twenty-five. I needed to get married and have one kid before the age of thirty. These were mile-markers on a timeline my brain felt compelled to follow.

The drive to complete life experiences “in time” morphed into “at the right time.” I worried the timing was off in a relationship. That a job offer wasn’t the right offer because again, the timing was amiss. I anguished later that perhaps that timing had been right but, regretfully, now it was too late.

I looked down at my sweet young daughter’s face thinking about the stage I was entering in my life, a new decade, near mid-life. Now I was starting to worry I didn’t have enough time left with my daughter. Time was simply going by too fast.

But that’s not what a four-year-old wanted to hear. So, I did my best.

“Time,” I said, “is like a bunch of presents all bundled up in one package. You unwrap one layer and you get a gift under there.”

“Will I get a pretty dress?” my little fashionista asked.

“Sometimes,” I replied. “But sometimes you won’t like what you get, but you can’t wrap it back up and then hope for something different.”

“How many presents do I get, mommy?” she asked. 

“That’s the fun part, baby, we don’t know!” I said emphatically. 

“That’s not fun, Mommy.”

I chuckled. “Not really I guess, but that’s why we have to enjoy every gift we get as much as we can, okay? 

“Okay, I will,” she said resolutely before wiggling down from my lap and running off to play with her toys.

I leaned back and pictured myself unwrapping this encounter. And instead of worrying about how the layer of wrapping paper had just floated away in the breeze, I appreciated that I was able to hold it, if only for a moment.