Forget the clock. It has no power over time.

The beaches were overrun with jellyfish these days, the monstrous red stinging kind that that looked like wounds along the shoreline.

At one extreme...the hours seemed to aggregate and sell like a wave, swallowing huge chunks of her day. At the other extreme when her attention was disengaged and fractured she experienced time at its most granular wherein moments hung around like particles diffused and suspended and standing in water. There used to be a middle way, too, when her attention was focussed but vast and time felt like a limpid pool ringed by sunlit ferns.

Time plays tricks on mothers. It teases you with breaks and brief caesuras, only to skip wildly forward, bringing breathtaking changes to your baby's body. Only he wasn't a baby anymore, and how often did I have to learn that? The lessons were painful.

If you've ever tried to keep a diary, then you'll know that the problem of trying to write about the past really starts in the present: No matter how fast you write, you're always stuck in the then and you can never catch up to what's happening now, which means that now is pretty much doomed to extinction.

The past is weird. I mean, does it really exist? It feels like it exists, but where is it? And if it did exist but doesn't know, then where did it go?

I whispered "Now! ... Now! ... Now!" ... over and over, faster and faster, into the wind as the world whipped by, trying to catch the moment when the word was what it is: when "now" became "NOW". But in the time it takes to say "now", "now" is already over. It's already "then".

A name, Ruth thought, could be either a ghost or a portent depending upon which side of time you were standing.

I’m reaching through time to touch you...you’re reaching back to touch me.