On Failing to Make the Leap

Memory tends to exaggerate. Memory takes an event that occurred once and perhaps was repeated two or three times and converts it to “always.” Thus memory tells me that my birth family, the nuclear family of father, mother and three little girls, was “always late.” The annual event that stands out in memory's files is arriving late to church the Sunday in spring when we should have set our clocks ahead an hour. It cannot really be the case that we forgot to re-set the clocks throughout my childhood, consistently, year after year, and yet that is how I remember it. I remember (painfully) our family arriving after the service had already begun, having completely missed the preceding Sunday School classes, and having to walk past the entire congregation, down the center aisle, to the only remaining empty pews, those in the first few rows of the church. In later years, during my adolescence, we were able to use the side aisle, but our embarrassment (I speak for myself and my sisters) was hardly mitigated, as all five of us sang in the choir, and all five—one bass, one alto and two sopranos—had missed the processional, and so we had to find our way, a tardy little robed-up quintet, into the choir corral (which must have another name, but it was not a "loft," not elevated in any way, just up in front of everyone) after the rest of the choir had marched in together and been seated on schedule.

This is my association with the “spring forward” time change, which I recall as being “invariably” neglected in our family household. We girls burned with shame. The family tardiness was hardly restricted to one day a year: that day simply stood out for reasons of its special noteworthiness and the annual--or not--repetition of the failing.

In adult life, determined not to repeat family history, my sisters and I developed a habit of allowing extra time in transit and arriving early for any and all appointments, usually with a book to read until the person we were meeting would show up on time. We didn’t mind waiting before the appointed hour. (Past the hour was different.) Our concern was not to keep anyone else waiting. I must admit, however, that when a friend described me as “punctual,” intending a compliment, I perceived the dismissive back of a hand. Who wants to be praised with such a goody two-shoes adjective?

Today is Sunday, the 13th of March, and I had a three o’clock appointment this afternoon. I prepared carefully, assembling representative books from and photo images of my sweet bookstore. David and I got to town early and made our usual rounds. I noted the time on the car clock countless times, calculating when we should turn toward the chosen rendez-vous.

We entered the bookstore downtown with what I had calculated was “plenty of time” for my meeting in the cafe. I looked at the clock. It was confusing, disorienting. Was it one of those trick clocks that some bars have, with the time shown backwards? No, I tried mentally flipping the image, and it still wasn’t right. Had the clock stopped? No, the minute hand was still jerking at intervals to show the passage of another sixty seconds. How long did it take me to decipher the face and realize that the time was 3:50? How long did it take me to remember that I should have----?

Yes, I had forgotten to spring forward. I had failed to make the leap. Confident in my preparations, all day I had labored under a delusion, now too late to correct. Oddly enough, at the time I should have been walking through that door, I had been talking to my mother and telling her I had a three o’clock appointment. But her days of having to hurry little girls to church and music lessons and 4-H meetings are long past. It’s up to me now. Most of the time I do pretty well. Not today, though. Rats!