Mother in Law: The passing of time

When I did my English Literature A Level we studied A Child in Time by Ian McEwan. We learned about how it was written to give the impression that time, at points, seemed to speed up or slow down. I loved my English Literature A Level. It was everything I had imagined it would be. One day, though, my floaty-scarf-wearing teacher asked us whether we thought time could actually speed up or slow down. Bearing in mind one of my other A Levels was Applied Maths, and I was later to become a lawyer, my answer was a straight 'no, don’t be stupid'. I think she thought we would discuss the question for the whole hour but I just couldn’t indulge this nonsense. 

In hindsight I think I was wrong. Time is weird.

When Deceptively Angelic Child no. 2 turned three, we had her party in our garden. By the age of three, of course, children (or my children, at least) start to become opinionated, and have the communication skills to say who they want to come to their party. Whilst I still try, and always will, to treat their birthdays as a day to congratulate the woman who struggled to bring them into the world, this goes down less and less well every year, starting from about this age. So we had 10 children of DALC2’s choosing, and their parents, in our garden. The party was to last two hours, and I had about half a dozen games planned. The children were all so quiet and shy, lining up to play Pin the Tail on the Elsa (or whatever it was) and every other game silently. We got through all the games and started expecting people to leave, but only fifteen minutes had gone by! I couldn’t believe it. I can’t remember what I did in desperation to fill the rest of the time. Probably put the telly on.

At the other extreme was the time I did a charity race for local businesses and thought, at one point, that I was more likely to die of old age than complete the course. A similar feeling to the last few hours of a couple of mediations this year, actually.

DALC2 is finding secondary school a slog. Every day she looks at her timetable and says 'I’ve got a bad day today'. I totally get it and remember it well. The days were so long and dreary. Even lunchtime felt like it went on forever. While she is going through this I am, as ever, at my desk wondering how it can be lunchtime and I’ve only recorded one chargeable hour.

I have a paralegal with me at the moment who won’t start her training contract for six months. She thinks this is a total waste of time when she could be getting on with qualifying. Again, I remember it well. Even going straight into a training contract, I felt like I was waiting, getting older by the day, to be unleashed into the profession and (mainly) have a salary that would allow me to move out of home.

It is the impatience of youth, I guess. There is no point telling DALC1 that a school day is actually quite short, or my paralegal that in 10 years time she won’t care that she worked for six months before her training contract. They feel exactly how I feel on the days I get home and my husband says dinner will be another fifteen minutes but I only had an apple for lunch. Might as well be a hundred years.

But, without wishing to be uncharacteristically saccharine this Christmas (and without wishing to get anyone sacked), if your chargeable hours target is also running away from you this December, try to remember that these things are much more important-

• Celebrating with, and thanking, colleagues
• Being physically and mentally present at home
• Your sanity

and as we reach the midpoint of Advent without the bloody elf even being mentioned in our house, don’t take it for granted that your kids won’t be twice as old in 365 days time. Time is weird.

Some facts and identities have been altered in the above article