Running through our Hands like Water

Time is an elusive and tricky substance.  It sort of feels like trying to hold running water in your hands: you can keep a little bit of it if you cup your hands just right, but the rest runs through your fingers and outside your palms.  The more you have, the faster it drips away. 

Remember being a kid and getting water from the hydrant?  Your little hands seemed to hold all you would need.  If you took a big drink, you could go back for more.  As an adult, time runs through our fingers and disappears like the water into the dirt.  Going back for more seems wasteful and redundant, so we try to make the most of that first acquisition.

We try to hold on to time and make the most of it because it really is our most precious commodity, but the tighter we cup our hands, the less room for water there actually is.  The more we struggle to make the most of our time, trying to control it with firm, tight hands causes that time to get away from us.

I used to think that all the time we spent traveling to our various pastures was such a waste.  Our farthest being 90 miles from home, I cringed at the 3 hours we would spend round trip.  It was amplified during the winter.  This past winter we had a mid-December arctic freeze for about 2 weeks.  School was cancelled, dogs came in the house, and hay clients couldn’t come because their trucks and our tractor’s engines were all gelled up.  During that time, my family and I made three trips down to that Simla pasture to check on cows, feed them, and break the frozen spring. 

It felt like such a waste to spend twice the amount of time driving than we did at the actual chore.  We would arrive and bundle up; I mean we REALLY bundled up by Colorado plains standards: coveralls over long-handles, tee shirt, sweatshirt, and windproof coats.  Our faces couldn’t even bear the wind chill, so out came hunting masks and wild rags.  Gearing up for the negative temps also took forever.  I remember sweating just getting it on and being frustrated that it took so long!

When we finally started breaking ice, it was so thick that it took both my husband and I to make even a little hole.  He would begin the outline of an opening, and I would finish the rest of the cracks and the pitch forking of the chunks out into the middle of the spring.  The cows were too cold to even think about drinking it.  A day later, we’d return to do it all again; the whole rigamarole!  Spending that little bit of time working together was some of the best use of my time.

Once it warmed up, we didn’t go down there for several more weeks until it was time to bring those cows home for winter pasture.  Not going down there meant there were three hours a day that I didn’t sit next to my husband.  Three hours I wasn’t holding his hand.  Three hours that my children didn’t listen to us planning for the future of our farm and for them.  Three hours, even in close proximity with my three little kids, were instead spent all going our separate ways—dividing and conquering.

I thought the time it took to travel to the pasture was like the water running down and out of my hands forever.  It was time lost that I could never get back.  Until the last time it snowed, and we had to travel 30 miles away to feed.  I wanted nothing more than to cup my hands and hold the 25 minutes it took to travel those 30 miles.  If I could have just held that little bit of time, I would have done so selfishly.  I realized that time in vehicles traveling to our work is just as valuable as the work itself. Until time gets away from us, we don’t realize how precious it is.   Like that water pooling and running out, we never even acknowledge the quantity we have because it feels immeasurable.  My children especially can’t tell that it is running out of their hands, but I can.