All you need is time

Even if I know that he spends two months with me and exactly the same time, maybe fewer days, away from me, I still feel that he is away far too long and with me far too briefly." Ann and I exchanged furtive glances. Was our friend actually going to drop tears into her coffee? But one of the marks of a strong woman is her ability to control tears and Conk, as we affectionately call her, kept her eyes swimming until her tears evaporated. "Time is a mystery – can’t solve it, can’t control it," she said, turning wet eyes on me. "You must write about that."

"I see time as a traitor," I said, "who runs out when needed most. When I was writing my thesis, chasing my deadlines, time just seemed to abandon me, yet I remember how slowly it passed when we were young, waiting to be allowed to wear lipstick. But now tempus indeed fugit. It literally just flies."

Ann bubbled over, as she normally does. "Time has touched our mirrors, too. I think it was Winnie Monsod who said that she felt young and energetic until she passed a mirror and wondered for a second: Who’s that old woman in there?" We all laughed. Who, lately, had not been surprised by that old woman in the mirror? Who had not paused to wonder where youth went and worried about how much worse that old woman is going to look.

"June Keithley on radio said she remembered a time when sales people would call her ‘Miss’ even if she already had a son," Ann recounted. "Then they started calling her ‘Mrs.,’ then ‘Tita,’ which she took to mean someone younger than her mother. Then they called her ‘Mommy‘ and now, when she takes her nine-year-old daughter shopping, they ask if the girl is her ‘apo.’ I guess we should get ready to be called ‘Lola’ or worse, ‘la.’ My grandmother’s nurse used to call her that."

"I had to tell people I worked with that if they called me ‘Mommy’ or ‘Mother,’ I would fire them. They call you ‘Mother’ and the next thing, they expect mothering. I don’t like that at work. They then called me Ms. Twee, which sounded silly but it had no emotional or psychological content. My grandchildren call me ‘Nannie’ because they couldn’t say ‘Granny.’ But June is right. What salesladies call you is a good indicator of how senior you look."

"Are you saying you mark time’s passage by what salesladies call you?" Conk asked, sounding more like her old self. She likes to hit you on the head with the bitter truth, so we call her "Conk."

"We like to think we can cheat the calendar so that’s not a reference point. I think what salesladies call you is a good benchmark," Ann said.

"If that’s true, then what does this mean?" I drew a long breath. "I was at the cosmetic counter of a large department store. The sales girl, who called me ‘Ma’am’ was trying to sell me something in an aluminum packet. I asked her, ‘How often do I use it?’ Suddenly her boss pounced on us, grabbed the product from her and in a condescending impatient tone said to me ‘Ganito ang pag-open niyan.’"

"Is she still alive?" Ann asked.

"I think she thought you were senile," Conk said, flushing with laughter. "What did you do then? How did you kill her?"

"I told her, ‘Often ang tanong ko, open ang sagot mo. Alam ko ring buksan iyan.’ See, I’m good, I didn’t kill her, just called attention to her mistake..."

"And we wonder why they call us names that make us feel old. Maybe they can smell our fear of aging and are instinctively led to the labels that freak us out. It’s their revenge on all older women for what mean-spirited ones like you do to them," Conk scolded.

"You wanted to talk about time. Time does that. It makes us old and secure so we no longer feel a need to mince words. Actually that’s timely – ha ha – because as we grow older, people tend to pay less and less attention to us. Older women seem to fade so easily into the woodwork so we have to assert ourselves and after decades of practice, it now comes naturally," I said.

"And time wreaks havoc on memory," Anna interjected, "so we make a scene now, we forget it in a few minutes, no big deal. What bothers me is sometimes I remember a dress and wonder what became of it. I think about when I wore it last and realize that 20 years have passed! It seems like only yesterday! Sounds so trite but more and more things that happened 30 years ago seem like they just happened yesterday."

"They say that as you grow older long-term memory gets sharper, meaning, it’s easier to remember what you did 30 years ago than what you did last night," Conk said.

"I think the kids call that ‘time travel.’ What I really want to know, Conk, is what you did last night and what’s his name," I said. She turned dry hostile eyes on me. "I told you to write about time and that’s all you’re going to do." When Conk says that, that’s all you do.

So let me recap what I’ve said about time. It betrays you, runs out on you, calls you names. It does awful things to your face and body but for some special people like Conk, it brings singular blessings – meaning there’s always time for love or it’s never too late or you’re never too old. On the other hand it may very simply mean: It’s about time.