Time After Time

When we moved to Morocco over two years ago, I had the most masculine watch that I wore everyday without fail. It dwarfed my tiny wrist with its massiveness. Until one day soon after our arrival it one day it stopped. I went to several shops in search of a battery that would fit it. Finally, after a few frustrating months of looking (frustrating being and understatement), I finally found it. And I found out that that it didn't need a new battery. My beloved watch was clinically dead.

I mourned its loss, but I didn't replace it. Which is what I would have done before. But, before I lived in a place where time mattered. Now, I was in Morocco, where nothing happens on time. Ever. So it seemed like the perfect time to brave the world. Alone.

I'd always had the habit of being habitually early to things. It was fueled by a chronic anxiety that I would be late. And in that lateness, that I would miss something. But do you know uncomfortable it is to always be the first one at the party? Very. And now I've been freed. Instead of arriving early or late, somehow without a watch, I arrived everywhere right on time.



Until I went home last summer and found a simple classic watch at Target for $10. So of course, I bought it. And while I admired its simple classic elegance and the fact that it was dirt cheap, I never wore it. Because, the strap was so delicate I thought I would break it. Mixed with the fact that I am not the most delicate girl. So I kept in in my purse where it sunk to the bottom amidst the lint and that sweaty piece forgotten gum. Abandoned.

And life went on quite happily.

Then, I saw it. My beloved watch's twin. It was almost identical. Big, clunky, functional and oh so gigantic. Which these days is really practical because then I don't have to dig past the sweaty gum on the bottom my purse to find my reading glasses to actually see what time it is. Before I had the chance to think, the watch was in my cart. My cyber shopping cart that is. And then I clicked "place order". It was after I did that that I remembered that Embassy does not accept shipments that contain batteries. So, I resigned myself to the fact that my beloved watch and I were simply not meant to be.

Until miracle of miracles, my watch somehow made it though package inspection. And was now on my wrist.



But what once I felt naked without, now seemed so cumbersome. It slid up and down my slender wrist. It poked. It itched. It got stuck under my sweater sleeve.

Why the hell did I buy a watch? So I could hang on to the past? So I could anxiously time my future in order to get there uncomfortably early?

So from now on I vow to live in the moment. Neither clinging to what was, nor nervously anticipating what will be. Watchless.