Breath Time

Breath Time  

by Nicki Kassolis Herdson

When my mother was sick with Alzheimer’s disease, she forgot how to tell time. Numbers on a digital clock became a meaningless collection of lines and circles for her. “What time is it?” I would ask her. Mom stood in front of the microwave and recited a series of numbers to me. “Let’s see,” she would say, searching her memory for a connection between the lines and a number. “It’s one...then a two...now dot, dot...then a four...and this is a,” she paused. “This is a...a five. That’s it. One two dot dot four five.” 12:45 - she got it right.

Her conception of time had been erased by the disease. I called this “breath time.” Without an idea of what any time meant, the breaths my mother took in and out mattered more than the time on any clock.

I am living through “breath time” now. Since our quarantine began, I have created one schedule and then another, trying to keep my family moving forward on some assemblance of a time continuum. Gone are the endless practices, lessons, and games that required us to leave the house. Gone is the rigor (and the stress) of an evening where three kids needed to be in four different places with two parents to taxi them. Gone is virtually everything that took us from one another. 

We are on breath time now. Our time is here; our time is with each other. The digits on the clock are mattering less and less. The breaths in and out of our lungs - to calm, to quiet, to prepare, to move within ourselves - are mattering more and more.