Time

Christine Tailer
By Christine Tailer
HCP columnist
Over the past several years that we’ve been living in our log home, we’ve fallen into the holiday tradition of putting a puzzle together.
I place a large board on the dining room table on which we build the puzzle. Any and all are welcome to stop by and add a piece or two. The board gives me the ability to move the puzzle, when the need arises. Our home, while large to us, is still small by most standards. I call it our transformer home. Every surface can transform to accommodate multiple functions.
Once the holidays are over and family and friends have left, Greg and I enjoy the task of sitting at the table, just the two of us, and puzzling out where the different pieces belong. Sometimes we talk as we puzzle away, though we are often quiet as we search for matches. The time passes easily. It actually seems as though time doesn't pass at all. I wouldn't say that time stands still, for I can see the progress of our puzzle. It rather seems that time has become ... timeless.
When we usually describe something as being timeless, we mean that it is so beautiful that it's not affected by change, such as timeless fashion. I think of my grandmother's silk scarves as holding this kind of timeless beauty. I used to wear them with my lawyerly outfits. Now I tie one around my neck when I’m wearing jeans and Greg and I are headed uptown to the local pizza parlor for dinner. The scarves’ timelessness is akin to lasting, enduring, ageless. They adorn blazers just as well as flannel shirts.
Puzzle building, however, is quite different from a timeless silk scarf. The puzzle will certainly not last or endure, for once we have completed it, we'll step back, admire it for a while, and then take it apart and return it to its box. Not the same, but perhaps the time we spend building the puzzle shares a timelessness with the start of the new year. We know that time passes, as one year turns to the next, but in so many ways it doesn't seem as though any time has passed at all.
No sooner have I gotten I used to writing 2024 as the date, I now find my brain having to reprogram itself to remind me to write 2025. A whole year's worth of time has slid through my fingertips, but somehow, I just can't quite grasp its passage. Timeless.
I think of family and friends whom I will not be able to call on the phone or stop by and visit. My heart skips a beat and a tear wells behind my eye just as it did when I first heard of their passing. It may have been many months ago, but it still feels like today. My heart does not believe that any time has passed at all. Timeless.
And then there are our new heartbeats just waiting to be born, at the same time that Greg and I watch our older grandchildren growing up into real people. Time is surely passing, but it is a timeless passing. My heart is so full with the beauty of our offspring that I am reminded of my grandmother's silk scarfs, timeless and enduring.
I smile. 2025 is dawning, and it's time to put our puzzle back in the box.
Christine Tailer is an attorney and former city dweller who moved several years ago, with her husband, Greg, to an off-grid farm in Ohio south-central Ohio. Visit them on the web at straightcreekvalleyfarm.com.