Time is Money

I had to fly to my father's funeral service a week ago. It was the end of a long journey with him, with a lot of years of distance between us because of his personality and choices, and then more years of distance because of his Alzheimer's disease. I wish I could say I learned a lot from him, but I can definitely say I learned something on the trip to his little hometown for the funeral. 

I learned that when they say that time is money, they preached a whole sermon.

I had a flight booked that would get me from South Florida to the nearest major airport to Dad's little hometown, with an hour layover somewhere out of the way, and then a rental car to drive the two hours into the middle of nowhere and the only hotel in city limits. Two hours of TSA, eight traveling, two driving, leaving right after work and getting in near midnight local time, just to wake up for the funeral, get a little sibling and niece and nephew time, then do the whole thing in reverse the next day. To say that I was not looking forward to it would be like saying Joan of Arc wished they'd turned down the heat a bit.

But out of the blue, my fancy cousins came to my rescue.

See, while I grew up pretty poor, I do have some cousins who have become decidedly fancy. Like, company jet fancy. When my cousin found out that my brother and I were flying out commercial, just the two of us instead of our combined family of twelve, he immediately offered us a ride on the company jet. Straight service from South Florida to Nowhere, Kansas. Obviously, I jumped at the chance. The novelty alone made it impossible to refuse - knowing G4 pilots on a first name basis. It's Mel, by the way.

It was glorious, no TSA, carry whatever we need, including my protein shakes and kombucha, practically as much space as my living room to relax. But it occurred to me that this is how rich people hack the system.

I stepped onto the plane at 2:30 and stepped off three hours later at my destination, where a car service dropped off a vehicle to take us to our (much nicer) hotel about twenty minutes away from Nowhere. At 5:00 local time I was already where I needed to be, with the whole evening ahead of me to hit the gym, get some writing done, relax, and even eat proper food before getting to bed at a reasonable hour so I don't snap at my family the next day.

I still snapped a little, but the unbothered sleep was fantastic. Forgive me. I'm weak.

That's literally seven hours of my life spared by that one simple change. Seven hours to be productive, to create art, to answer emails, to take care of myself, to connect with family. Seven hours that came a high cost to my fancy cousin, but a window into what that life must be like.

We like to say all the time that everyone has the same twenty-four hours in a day, no matter who you are. It's intended to spur us on, like a motivational poster, but just like the cat hanging from the tree branch, it's a lie. That cat is going to fall, and money literally buys you more hours in the day.

An average day for me starts at six, getting up and making sure the kids get ready for school. Then driving to work, through traffic that depends largely on the weather and how soon we leave the house. I teach six classes now, so I have less time at work to grade assignments, plan lessons, make calls, and respond to email. After work, I usually tutor for a bit, then head to the gym. Wifey meets me at the gym to take the girls, and when I'm done, I head home, but before I can sit down, I cook, eat with the family, then do some work for my MFA classes, get ready for workshop on the weekend, and, if there's still time after all that and even a little gas left in my intellectual tank, I'll try to write about 500 words. Cap the day with an hour of alone time with wifey, if her own workday hasn't knocked her out already, and try to wind down to get enough sleep to start over the next day.

But imagine if I had that rich people kind of money, the kind of people everyone says have the same hours in the day I do. I could wake up at six and get my workout in right away, because not only would someone else be making lunches for me and the kids, but the state of the art gym would be down the hall from my bedroom, not a fifteen minute drive away. I'd get in the car with the kids alert and pumped for the day, but instead of driving and stressing about the idiots drifting into my lane with a phone glued to their face, I'd be getting lessons and notes ready for the day, or - God forbid - having a meaningful conversation with the kids. Then once I got to work, instead of grading, planning, calling, or emailing, I'd be doing only the tasks I really love, because my assistant would be doing all that clerical work. Part of my day would be delegating to them, but the actual amount of work I'd have to do would be pretty minimal - streamlined and purposeful, not a drudge in the day. Heck, I could spend part of my nine to five hours on the MFA work, and take a long lunch break to knock out a coupe thousand words on my work in progress. Tell my assistant I'm not to be bothered until two, thank you very much. Dinner's on the table when I get home, the tutor has already helped the kids with their homework, and wifey and I are settling down for some Netflix and whatever with plenty of evening left in the day.

This is what we really mean when we say that time is money. This is what I mean when I say we don't all have the same hours in a day. In the first scenario, I've got a tight twenty-four, and every hour I use for productivity is an hour stolen from my family or my sleep routine. In the second, when you combine all the productive hours I delegate to my helpers with all the productive and relaxing hours I use myself, that day can have thirty-six or more hours in it. In fact, if I'm the kind of jerk who doesn't care about the work/life balance of my employees, I can Miranda Priestly another few hours into my day by having my assistants work well after I'm asleep, probably in my hyperbaric chamber that ensures I'll live to 150 years old with perfect knees. 

On the private flight back to South Florida, I big-picture edited the last twenty chapters of a novel I've been trying to revise for three months now. I might have been able to do this on the commercial flight, but the discomfort, noise, and airport traffic would have severely diminished my productivity.

Time really is money, and money can buy you as much time as you're willing to shell out for. There's a reason why so many successful artists either come from wealthy families or have wealthy patrons who got them past those lean years. Virginia Woolf said that an artist needs a room of her own. I have a chair in a corner when the kids leave me alone to be able to sit in it. But while those of us who create art without wealth might be handicapped without the extra time that wealth affords, we do have our own struggles and experiences and ingenuities to write about. We really are the heroes in our stories, the boys fighting giants with slingshots or women taking down the Capitol with a bow and arrows. What we lack in time and money, we make up for in hustle and flow, and our art resonates with the people more because of it.

Grief for My Father

 So, my father died two weeks ago.

I haven't really told anyone at work who didn't already know him, and a few people who did have come to me to express their condolences. But the reason I avoid talking about it isn't what I think people expect, which is mainly why I avoid talking about it.

How do I tell people that I wasn't close with my father, and that even saying that is an understatement? How do I tell people who are genuinely concerned for my emotional state that my biggest concern in Dad's passing is what I'm going to say at the memorial, if I choose to speak at all. How will people hear me saying that I can't remember one actual, meaningful activity with my father? That I couldn't tell you what hobbies or pursuits he was into, other than watching old cowboy shows and spending money on cowboy boots and cowboy hats so he could look like the guys in the cowboy shows?

How do I tell people that my father consistently made decisions that not only kept his children at a distance, but traumatically harmed them as well? 

If you looked up the word neglect in the dictionary, you wouldn't find a picture of my father there, because we didn't take pictures and if we did, he wouldn't be doing much. His world was very insular, a lonely little planet with not much vegetation and even less beauty. I hear other people talk about their father's absence, and blaming it on other pursuits. Their dad wasn't around for them because he was focused on making money, or following some sport or another, or always with his dudes off doing dude stuff. Not to diminish their experience, but I wish I could say that. I wish I could stand up at the memorial and say, "My father wasn't around for us kids, but look at all the money he made." Or maybe "I didn't know my dad very well at all, but he sure loved the Heat." Even if I could say, "My dad was kind of a mystery to us at home, but look at all these die-hard friendships he built." I don't know a single friend he had. My mom has friends, and I can even name a handful of them. I can't even name all my dad's siblings, because he never bothered much to make them a part of our lives either.

And the worst part about it is that I'm constantly on guard for those same qualities in myself. I'm a writer. Not for nothing, but I do enjoy my solitude. I like my own company, and the company of fictional people. But I have to remember to touch grass, to open the gates of the pillow fort and let the wife and kids come in to play too. At least my kids would be able to name a bunch of things their father enjoyed doing, things he was passionate about - writing, exercise, video games, Spider-Man. Plus I try to get involved in the things they like as well. Bluey is a darn fine show, and Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir is a top flight superhero show and I will die on that hill with a red and black-polka-dotted flag in both hands. 

A student asked me the other day what my favorite car is, and I really don't have one. I don't put a lot of thought into those things. So, then it was my favorite possession. I couldn't really name something that I couldn't live without or couldn't replace if I lost. I just don't like spending a lot of money on things - possibly another thing I got from my folks. But these vacations, I love spending money on vacations. I love having adventures with my family, whether that means theme parks and rides, or camping and outdoors, or finding new places to play and explore in the neighborhood. I want my children to have exactly the opposite problem at my memorial than I'm having with my father. Instead of having a difficult time remembering one fun or meaningful memory with their dad, I want them to worry about narrowing down the list of hundreds. I want them to have to sort out all the pictures, even though I hate taking them. I want them to have arguments about which trips were the best, or which pranks and jokes were the funniest, or which routines were most personal to them.

So it's not that I'm not grieving. I'm not sad, that's for sure, at least no sadder than I was before. I'm not regretful, because we did our best to take care of Dad in his last years, out of compassion, honor, and concern for his dignity. Honestly, my sister did the majority of the heavy lifting there, and his last days were as comfortable as possible. His body had grown weaker, and the Alzheimer's had robbed him of some of his memories, but that last year in the home passed like most of the years before it - Dad sitting in his chair, watching his shows, asking for his food when he got hungry, and generally choosing not to interact with the people around him, even when we came to visit. It's hard to grieve when there was no connection for death to sever, but if I'm grieving, it's because I'm lamenting the father that I could have had, the stories I could have told about him, the community I could have seen impacted by his presence and saddened by his passing.

And I'm grieving the paternal skills that I never got. I started my parenting journey with exactly zero tools in my toolbox. My oldest kids are very aware that they had a different, and, shall we say, less skilled father than the littles have now. One by one, I've had to add parenting tools to my collection, and most of them are tools I didn't know I needed until I broke something or messed something up and had to repair it. My family is odd, four kids with a 22 year difference between the oldest and youngest, grand-kids the same age as their auntie. There was a time when I said I was done with having kids, that I would be 45 and free, finished with parenting and ready to move on to the next phase. Now I realize that sounded a lot like my father talking. So, while they were surprises, I'm glad for every extra chance I've gotten to be a father, and grandfather, too, to build those relationships that my father never bothered to build.