It doesn’t track or alter time, and it’s not a machine. It has no moving parts.
It’s a clear plastic contraption about six inches high with seven plastic disks in pastel colors. Each disk is labeled with a day of the week and has an a.m. and a p.m. side, marked with sun and moon respectively.
It’s a pill holder for my prescription meds and supplements.
Once a week I line the disks up on my kitchen table and snap them open. I take the pill bottles out of the cupboard and, one at a time, shake out my week’s supply and deposit them in the correct slots. I snap them shut and insert them back into their holder, ready for the next week.
I used to keep a cobalt blue ceramic bowl on the table in which I dumped random quantities of each pill. Every morning and evening I’d pick out what I needed to take at that time. It worked fine—the pills were handy, and I rarely forgot to take them. I’d add more as they ran low. I’d never have bought a special gizmo to hold my pills—it was a free perk through my health insurance plan.
I’m aware of the passage of time when I turn calendar pages—September already, summer’s over—and on my October birthday: Whoosh, there goes another one. I see the signs when I look in the mirror, when my race pace gets a little slower on each 10K, when my daughter is suddenly middle-aged. We all recall how time seemed to drag torturously when we were kids—would school never end? Would Christmas ever come? And then how it started to rocket by, faster and faster, as we got older. But that’s to be expected—we live with it, laugh it off. C’est la vie.
But now. Once a week. Every week. I consider the seven empty disks. And I think, no, it can’t be. Another week already? Didn’t I just fill them the other day? Where has the time gone?
“I have measured out my life in coffee spoons.” T.S. Eliot’s Prufrock was ruminating on the passage of time and the meaning of life.
I could re-employ the blue bowl. Toss the pill holder in the recycling bin. Or repurpose the disks—store paper clips, safety pins, thumb tacks. But there’s no going back. I’ll still hear the days ticking away. I’m measuring out my life seven pills at a time.
Alice Lowe
Alice Lowe’s flash nonfiction has been published this past year in Tangled Locks, Bridge VIII, Skipjack Review, Change Seven, Bluebird Word, Eunoia, and MORIA. She has been twice cited in Best American Essays. Alice writes about life, literature, food, and family in San Diego, California. Read and reach her at www.aliceloweblogs.wordpress.com.
