Library in a Book
Compiled by Jennifer Hall and Rachel Greenblatt

LIBBY LAZEWNIK

The Sticky-Fingered Boy

Along time ago, when the muse was upon me, I wrote a poem in which I compared Time to a “fat boy,” greedily plucking the years from us like so many sugary sweets. I called him “sticky-fingered,” and made it clear that I did not regard him with anything resembling warmth or affection.

At other moments, I have drawn parallels between Time and the wind that scatters the days like the brittle leaves of autumn. I have compared it to water, slipping through our fingers despite our most earnest efforts to cup and contain it; to an all-consuming fire; and to the earth, which swallows everything in the end.

Time, in other words, is the enemy. Unfortunately, it is an enemy that always wins.

I have regarded the whole setup as a personal outrage. Is it fair, my being thrust into this arena, this life, as an ill-equipped lightweight facing off against a rock-muscled champion whose lightest tap will fell me? It is an unequal match, a fight I am doomed to lose. In a vain effort to delude ourselves that we have any power at all to stay Time’s hand, some of us take up photography, or videotaping, or journal-keeping, pretending that there is the remotest possibility of dominating even a splinter of Time’s great and unyielding tree - of capturing so much as the fleeting breath of its passage within a picture frame or two notebook covers. But the most assiduous record-keeper will wind up with just that: records. The days themselves, and the years, are irrevocably gone. What we may be hoarding in the cedar chests of our minds is memory, not the real thing. That is lost to us forever, stolen by the fat boy with the insatiable sweet tooth. The battle was lost before it was begun: a foregone conclusion. And when the bell rings to signal the end of a round, Time will be standing in his corner, brushing off his pants and wearing his customary tired grimace. Winning can be such a bore.

Time broods darkly in the background of our lives always, but birthdays are the worst. Birthdays are Time’s trophies. He lines them up on his mantelpiece, to gloat over, while we anxiously inspect the mirror for gray hairs and scratch yet another year sadly off the calendar. I remember when I turned eighteen and moaned along with my friends about how ancient we were all becoming. When my father, z”l, celebrated his own next birthday, I asked him if he was depressed.

He looked at me as though I had suddenly begun to converse in Chinese.

“Depressed?” asked the man who had survived the Holocaust by the skin of his teeth, and lost so very much along the way. “Depressed?” he asked, bewildered. “Depressed, about having lived another year?”

It was as though we were inhabiting different planets. He had something valuable to teach me, my dear father. Perhaps the most valuable lesson of all. But I was not ready, then, to hear it.

Nor did I become ready for many a long year afterward. Perhaps I am still unready. I still harbor an uneasy mix of feelings regarding the march of Time - a mix that tends to leave behind an aftertaste more unpleasant than otherwise. I ought, at this stage of my life, to be dignified in the face of the inevitable. I ought to regard the steady, hissing escape of the years - like steam from a boiling kettle - with equanimity at least. If I can’t make Time my friend, I ought to at least be prepared to shake his sticky hand and let bygones be bygones.

And yet, I still find myself holding my breath at particular moments, imprinting their beauty, their poignancy, upon my memory as though to seal them there forever. Like an ice-storm that imprisons every blade of grass, every sparkling bush and tree and branch, in a frozen, immutable sheath of glass, I long to store the days of my own life in an unbreakable glass case and keep the key tightly in my hand forever.

But nothing can grow in an ice storm, and faces smiling out of picture frames are lifeless. It is the changes, inner and outer, that define human progress. And, much as I hate to admit it, Time is our ally here. Without Time, there can be no change. I once considered writing a science-fiction story in which a woman with a couple of adorable babies longs to keep them that way. By some marvellous alchemy too complex to describe here, she gets her wish. Her babies will remain babies forever. She will be the quintessential mother always.

Her first reaction, naturally, is one of delight. But when the years pass with no diminution in the number of diapers to be changed, no increase in her babies’ vocabularies, no sign of progress in the cute little tricks they do, she begins to wonder if the blessing she’d so desired was not really a curse in disguise. It is the knowledge of impending and inevitable change that makes each moment in our lives so exquisitely sweet. Precisely because we know we can’t hold onto them, we are driven to pack the years to the maximum, like expanding duffel bags. Endlessness produces, mostly, ennui. It is the glimpse of a distant end that makes the beginning and the middle so very delicious... if we let it. As long as we insist on fighting Time, we are not letting it.

Looking back over this article, I see that I have used upwards of half a dozen different metaphors for Time. Metaphor seems to fit this tricky antagonist, too slippery to catch hold of (like the water running under that proverbial bridge). Time is unyielding as the earth itself. It is fleet as the wind. Like an inferno, it devours everything in its path. Time is a heavyweight boxer who packs a mean punch. It is an unfellable tree. It is all of these things, and a thousand things more. Time, in a word, is unconquerable. And yet, despite this truth, Time has one very endearing characteristic. It has absolutely no objection to being harnessed.

Another metaphor to add to our list: a horse, or even a pack-mule. Time will bend a docile knee to let us mount whenever we like. Should we show an inclination to throw a saddle over its back and take up the reins, Time will let us lead him around like the most tractable farm animal. A five-year-old could do it.

The trick, I think, is to stop whining and start winning. Instead of sitting on the years like a miser on his pile of money, we can spend them instead, wisely and beautifully. And I’ve come to the conclusion, much to my chagrin, that the only way to do that is by joining forces with the enemy.

We must become farmhands, rolling up our sleeves and hitching the mule to plough the field of our own lives. Each year is a furrow to be dug together with Time. The seeds we plant with his help are guaranteed to sprout, and then burst into glorious blossom - if we go out there and get the job done instead of boxing at shadows.

Because that, in the end, is all Time can be for us: a shadow (another metaphor!), it trails us everywhere, coughing discreetly over our shoulders from time to time (those gray hairs and birthdays) to remind of its presence. Like a good butler, it never intrudes. It merely serves. It is up to us, masters and mistresses of the manor, to decide the day’s menus and which silverware to use for the guests.

Here he comes again, the lad with the sugar-smeared lips, greedy hand outstretched for more. He’s just stolen an hour of my time... or has he? For whatever they’re worth, I’ve got these pages to show for that hour. He, on the other hand, has got the candy he came for.

I think we can work together, this kid and me.

And in the end, I just may emerge a winner from our partnership, too. While I will not outlast Time, I can change and grow with it. I can wear those gray hairs with dignity when they come, and speak the wisdom I have gained with the years. I will relish the companions I’ve picked up on the journey. Though my closet be crammed with regrets and disappointments, its shelves spilling over with half-formed plans and abandoned dreams, in a larger sense I will bask in the knowledge of a job well done.

And in this way, perhaps, the years will taste even sweeter to me than they do to the sticky-fingered boy in my poem.

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