☼ 21 Speaking of ... one step at a moment (and other interpretations of taking the time)

We agreed in the car that we would warn the third that if either of us started crying to just carry on – just a 'that time of (a crappy) year' type of cry. We'd both thought about canceling, but this is the kind of place you can burst into tears in without too much fuss. It's that place I told you about last year? Or the year before? Where you meet strange people suddenly in hallways, some of them take up residence in one of the many rooms around the house. Well they've moved to a new house now but we still see the same type of strangers coming out of rooms, wandering into the kitchen, fixing cars in the garage.

There's always a lot of comfort food and a cup of tea with a tiny jug for milk. But this time amongst it all were 3 miniature hour glasses, each tied with a different coloured ribbon which had been curled at the ends. I picked the gold one. And we were instructed by M that she saw these and thought of the three of us. And that we each had to think of something to say about these hourglasses.

M went first. She held her mini hour glass and said don't think the little bits of time don't matter – in a good way the small chunks of time you can put into a project or skill add up and build toward something that is greater then the sum of its parts.

I googled mine and came up with something long and not exactly appropriate that didn't really have that much to do with the hourglass in front of me. But we agreed it was a starting point and had something to do with the act of having to turn the hourglass over :-)

N delayed until we were starting to pack up. Then she came back from the bathroom and said, ok, I've got mine. This past year has been particularly rough for her but she seems to have bested it so far. She has been writing when she can, hoping to put together a book. She held her hourglass and said, this hourglass is a clock, it is simple, but it is still a clock. I aim to write a book, regardless of what happens if it gets published or not, if I finish it and even if I have to self-publish it, it is still a book.

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