The Now
On that day several years ago, I arrived home from work, tired and stressed, and started the climb the weathered steps to my apartment. I was worried about the future. How long could I go on like this, struggling paycheck to paycheck? How much longer would I be able to feed and clothe my two teenaged boys, while managing the monthly bills?
In that moment, that day, I paused on the stairs, and I wondered, how important, really, is “now”? After all, now won’t last forever. One day, I’ll be old. This will all be behind me. When I’m old, the things I’m worried about now, will be lost to the past. The boys will be adults, with their own lives and families. I may still be alone, somewhere. It won’t be like this, but I’ll probably look back on this time, and no doubt, I’ll wonder how I made it.
What will it be like, to be old? What will I see, when I look back? How will I feel?
I was curious to know.
And so, as I climbed the wide, dark steps upward to my old apartment with the leaky ceilings and the mice and the neighbours whose loud arguments I awoke to every morning, I paused, and I closed my eyes.
I imagined that I was old and gray and wrinkled, sitting in a chair as I gazed out a window toward a bleak landscape, thinking back on my life. And I came back here, back to this time, to this apartment, to this life. To this…now.
I grabbed the wooden railing, pulling my tired body slowly upward and, reaching the apartment door, I turned the handle and pushed it open.
Stepping inside, my heart swelled when I again heard my youngest son, his voice slightly muffled behind his bedroom door. He was playing a video game, chatting with online friends. It was so good to hear him again as he was then, no worries about work, relationships, or finances. Just laughter.
I reached out and ran my fingers along the edge of the old washstand my mother had gifted to me before she passed, and I wondered where it was now. I hoped someone was enjoying it as much as I had.
Both boys’ backpacks were lying haphazardly on the kitchen table, tossed there when they’d arrived home from school. Filled with notebooks and empty juice boxes and granola bar wrappers.
I stood there in the kitchen, silent, so happy just to be there again. I listened to the once-annoying sound of traffic roaring past our main street apartment windows, marvelling that I could be back here, just for now, for a moment, my boys going about their day, living their after-school lives. Content.
And as I sat there at my lonely window, remembering, my chest filled with the joy of that moment recaptured from so long ago, when my boys and I were happy and together every single day.
I opened my eyes and glanced around at the apartment. Only minutes before, the thought of coming home to it again had filled me with despair and worry. Now, I could see it with different eyes. I was still here. My boys were still here. The washstand…still here. Life hadn’t slipped away from me yet. I still had time. Time to make them supper. Time to ask them about their day. Time to be in their presence, to hear their voices, to share and experience our lives, together.
And since that day, whenever I feel sad or discontented with my life, I remind myself of that old woman alone by the window, the woman I will become. And I am grateful for now, no matter what my “now” resembles.
Painful or joyous, everything is temporary, and I will embrace the “now” in honour of that person ahead of me, the person I will become, the person who will someday stare out the window and wish that, for just one moment, she could go back.
And now I know that she’ll be able to.
-Rebecca Wilkinson