My family would keep calendars on the wall for months. There was always a reason. Dad liked the flowers on top of the April calendar. Mom wrote an important number on January 10th. My little sister ate July and then we would forget about August by the time we came to it.
I have an odd relationship to time. My year flipped over while I wasn't looking. I think childhood habits would have had me content to keep living May. A year from turning myself, a year from his death, a month before I fought a fire, three months before I was actually free.
I am actually free now. I am done doing time, but my time is not quite my own. I live with Mamasaur now, on her Unstandard Time.
Today she made an appointment at 5:15pm., for us to have a chance to get our backs fixed, after our accident. I work till 5:15pm, so in essence- Mamasaur made an appointment for us to be late. There was traffic because there's always traffic in Southern California on a weekday just after work and a two minute drive became a twenty minute drive. Sometimes, I leave work early. Every so often, a street is unblocked.
Theoretically, she claimed, we could get there on time.
Time is a gamble to her.
And Mamasaur rolls hard.
I imagine, in her mind, Time is a casino. Every minute is a wild games of chance, or a precious illusion of skill. She's feeling lucky today- every day- with chips falling from her pockets like rainfall. She has a chip for every day she survived, and she winks at the dealer before going all in.
Is she bluffing?
I've known her my whole life and your guess is as good as mine. She has a poker face when she plays her days, no matter the cards she is dealt.
I know how this game ends, in the end. I know the house always wins, but I stopped trying to argue my point years ago, long before my little sister stopped eating the calendar pages.
At least, I'm pretty sure she stopped eating the calendar pages.
Now that I think of it, I've never seen one hanging in her house either, and it wouldn't surprise me if she snacked it away, or burned pieces of it in rebellion of time itself.
Everyone in my family has an odd relationship to time...
