Time is a Two Face
- A Woman Of Her Words
- Apr 3, 2023
- 4 min read
"Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory."
Dr. Seuss
Time is a Two Face
I know this title sounds like a Johnny Mercer lyric that I wrote about quite a while back, but this title is a true statement—for time is a “two-faced and worrisome thing” just like the lyrics from Johnny’s Blues in the Night*:
“A woman’s a two face
A worrisome thing
Who’ll leave ya’ t’sing
The blues in the night.”*
Time is just like that, a ”two face.” Now, memory can take us back in time, a time that we lived, a time at which we made a memory and in a blink we can run the gamut of emotions and feel just what we were feeling, thinking, seeing at that instant. So time has the ability to serve dual purposes as it can wound and heal. Forget Einstein and all that theory of relativity hokum—trust me on this, I am 76 and I am telling you from a long life’s experience that time is a two face.
And I can give you an example. I was showering the other day and started to hum a song, “You Belong to Me,” that my mom used to sing to me when I was 4 or 5--and suddenly images flooded my mind. I saw an old prototype silver plane, flying over what I envisioned as first over an ocean and then a wet jungle. Then I remembered the lyrics:
See the pyramids along the Nile
Watch the sunrise from a tropic isle
Just remember darling all the while
You belong to me
See the market place in old Algiers
Send me photographs and souvenirs
Just remember when a dream appears
You belong to me
I'd be so alone without you Maybe you'd be lonesome too in blue Fly the ocean in a silver plane See the jungle when it's wet with rain Just remember till you're home again You belong to me I'd be so alone without you Maybe you'd be lonesome too in blue Fly the ocean in a silver plane See the jungle when it's wet with rain Just remember till you're home again You belong to me “**
You have my word of honor that I vividly remember this song—yes, I am old and now sometimes forgetful, but those lyrics transported me back to our plain little kitchen. I was probably drying dishes or playing on my own while my mother sang. My guess is that she was singing along with Patsy Cline as we did often listen to country music. I was galvanized by the image of a silver plane flying over the ocean, perhaps followed by flying over that jungle “wet with rain.” I remember that an image flashed in my mind and apparently STUCK, because when I hummed the notes that very same image that had seared my brain popped up again.
Nevertheless, there we were frozen in time, in a moment that, compared to the years and untold moments that have passed, was but a blink. There it was—that time, ready for plucking, and all I had to do was hum a few notes.
Actually, I should also indict memory along with time as I pass this sentence, because those two work hand in glove to move you through years, and then prod you so the vision in your head appears . . . lights, camera, action, you are there once again, dressed in the same clothes, same people nearby, in the same vision that was shared by all present. It is mental voodoo at its best. It is magic. It is weird and it is two-faced because, to simplify, you can be sad or happy exactly as you were then.
It is also awesome, a gift presented by our Creator so we can catalog our existence, and recall it at will, or have it evoked by a tune, a word or phrase, or simply because we just want to remember the moments of our lives. I find myself in retirement harking back to the past often because my memories are there and my peeps who left me long ago can be recalled while sitting on my sofa. My reverie has no doubt been sparked by today’s world that I sometimes choose to escape. Don’t get me wrong, we had our problems then--unrest, even a rampant virus that got me in particular (Polio) and the vagaries of inflation, wars, and all the things that this world has beheld since the beginning. But somehow my past memories seem sweeter, people were gentler and kinder, and life seemed a tad slower.
I know my reveries are because I am old, and because at some point not that far off in the future I will “shuffle off.” I know all that, I know I am romanticizing what might have frustrated me just as much then as the present does. And yet, still I retreat to recall those I miss, to re-live a moment I loved, to see myself in the starring role of my very ordinary life. But it comforts me and girds me up for tomorrow. I know what I have lived and survived, and that alone can comfort a person.
So, I guess both TIME and MEMORY are two-faced, but I’m jake with that because taken as a whole, my past was pretty good, and served me well.
"You Belong to Me" is credited to Chilton Price, Pee Wee King, and Redd Stewart.
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