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The Legacy My Grandmother Left Me Regarding Time
There’s No Such Thing as Fashionably Late, You’re Just Late
When I was a youth in Minneapolis, MN, my grandmother, Fern Helm, would pick my brothers and me up to go to Sunday School and Church at 9:00 every Sunday. She told us that she would be there at 9:00, and if we weren’t ready, she would leave us. I don’t know what would actually happen if we were late because, during the dozen or so years it applied, we were never late.
Throughout life, I have ranked timeliness somewhere between cleanliness and Godliness and have done my best to be on time everywhere for everything. I recognize that there are some events where it is “socially acceptable” to arrive late, but that doesn’t prevent me from establishing my own determination of what is late and abiding by it. Only one thing keeps me from being on time for absolutely everything… other people.
It seems that the people who have played the biggest roles in my life have no appreciation for time. I still have hope for my own grandchildren, who have not yet been corrupted by their parents who should know better. One grandchild, transported by her parents, showed up for her team's basketball game just as warmups were finishing. The 11-year-old was not to blame.
I have resigned myself that showing up on time for birthday parties, social affairs, pretty much everything, is a futile effort, and spending time in my life I’ll never get back.
Before my grandmother passed, our family organized an appreciation dinner at a hotel where her friends and family could acknowledge how important she’d been in their lives. I’d flown into town and was staying at her home, along with my mother and one of my brothers. That she was being honored was a surprise to her, she thought she was attending an event having to do with me. She suffered from diabetes and was mostly blind, yet she rushed us all to get ready and out the door so that we wouldn’t be late. If she’d gotten her way, we’d have all arrived at the hotel at noon for a 2 pm event. The future doesn’t bode well for me in terms of caring less about time.
I am who I am and accept it. The others in my life are who they are and I’m trying to grudgingly accept that as well. I still arrive at work 15 minutes early most days; on the rare day, I’m only 5–10 minutes early… I’m late. I’m the only one who cares, except, of course, my grandmother, who’s looking down, smiling.
