Chapter 13: Who Knows Where the Time Goes?

“¡Buenas tardes!” exclaimed the cheerful radio announcer as I made the bed in our Madrid apartment. I did a double-take at the radio, and then looked at my watch on the nightstand. It was indeed noon. How did that happen?

We moved to Spain within days of my retirement, and arrived just in time for a global pandemic and lockdown; thus, I have no first-hand experience of a “normal” retirement. But I had been warned by Kate over the past year — and by my father many years prior — that the days go faster, not slower, in retirement.

Kate, who retired two years ago, spent her waking hours honing her photography skills and taking care of the apartment and me (including packing brown bag lunches so fabulous they were mentioned in an official NYC Commendation). In between, she acted as the de facto tour guide for our many out-of-town visitors, bursting with enthusiasm for The City’s subways and ferries, museums and historic sites, farmers markets and cheap eats (the native Chicagoan proving there’s no proselytizer like a convert). So, Kate’s experience of her days vanishing made perfect sense.

As for my father’s description of the passage of time, he’d taken up with a tennis instructor 38 years his junior when he retired, so while his warning about the ticking clock was wise, I wasn’t exactly in the mood to listen to him.

Over the past 10 years, though, in preparation for my retirement, I had invested considerable energy into thinking about the concept of time. Though it is not uncommon for people “of a certain age” to become obsessed with the brevity of life, my own obsession was channeled into trying to learn to play the piano — a lifelong dream. While I have no talent for the instrument and still cannot play a single song, I loved my lessons and daily practice sessions. And the three teachers with whom I studied over the years changed my life by instilling in me a new understanding of time. No longer a passive listener but an active would-be player, I began to internalize how music bends, elongates, or compresses time, and I finally began to absorb that time really is relative (something three physics courses in my youth failed to teach me).

My piano studies had to be suspended, however, when we moved to Spain; the public-health emergency precluded me from shopping for a new keyboard. I miss my lessons, but I also wonder how I ever found the time for practice. The truth is that both Kate and I — once highly functioning professionals who thought nothing of managing scores of people and projects at a time — were now struggling with time management.

So, being the high-capacity leaders that we once were, we rolled up our sleeves to solve the problem. Did our “retirement enterprise” have competing interests or values? Is it really possible to sleep 10 hours a night, communicate with dozens of friends in numerous time zones, prepare wonderful meals and work out long enough to keep off the pounds, binge-watch multiple Netflix and PBS shows, read the classics, and become fluent in a language we’d never seriously studied?

No. It isn’t.

Tomorrow, for the first time in 50 days, Kate and I will be able to leave the apartment together, but only for an hour a day, only between the hours of 6 a.m. and 10 a.m., and only to travel within a one-kilometer radius of our apartment. When the Spanish government announced the relaxed confinement measures last night, we were by turns elated and apprehensive. We want to stay safe, and we want the downward trajectories in Spain’s infection and mortality rates to continue.

But as today slipped away, the morning rapidly turning to afternoon, our worries shifted. How will we ever find the time to go outside for an hour a day?

©2020 Kay Diaz