Who gave Time a Speed-Pass?

I find myself wandering into the past today. Ten years ago, I was exploring the eastern side of Aruba with my husband, Chip. I'd given him a surprise trip to a new place (a week on a Caribbean island, no less!) as a Valentine's Day gift. Yeah, in 1999, I could do that. We were both working, we had the comfortable six-figure income, we had the big beautiful home (a 1780s colonial in southwestern Connecticut), we had all the books and music and toys we wanted. The kids, my daughter and his son, were doing well. Life was pretty good. We didn't realize how much we had to lose. Most of all, we had no idea that it would all fall apart, completely, within three short years.

Was that really as much as 10 years ago? Was it really only 10 years ago? It was another world, another lifetime, another me. I'm older, perhaps wiser, though still frustratingly full of human frailty and fragility...

The new century heralded the beginning of The Bad Times. In February 2001, Chip lost his job. A week or two later, he had his first mysterious brush with death: admitted to the ICU in a diabetic coma, in heart, lung, and kidney failure, with double pneumonia and a heart attack for good measure. Two weeks in hospital, two weeks of touch-and-go and "We don't know..." Then they sent him home. Just as mysteriously, he recovered completely, with no lasting damage, with nothing to show that anything had happened at all.

Yeah, February 2001 was the beginning. From then on, a dark cloud followed us everywhere. There were no jobs to be had for Chip, and one by one the clients for whom I did medical writing were cutting back: the dot.bomb fall-out. Crises touched down like tornadoes in our lives and the lives of our friends and relatives. No sooner did we attend to one than another showed up on the radar, racing in from a different direction. Trauma and tragedy became comedic in their proportions. Crying and laughing often seemed the same. Struggling so hard our psyches snapped, we crawled through that year. Did good stuff happen? I have to think hard to remember. Yep, good stuff happened. But it was so overshadowed by the clouds, the precious sustenance it provided lasted only moments and we were once again parched with exhaustion and dread.

Illness. Accidents. Unemployment. Legal problems. Bankruptcy. Death. Misfortune of all kinds dogged us through 2001 and 2002. Chip had another mysterious, too-close-to-fatal illness. Relatives became ill, became hurt, became dead. Friends lost jobs, lost homes, lost spouses. Clawing our way blindly, we often lost ourselves and each other. New afflictions struck us both on what seemed a monthly basis.

In November 2002, Chip's best friend since high school, and an ex-lover of mine, died in his sleep on our living-room sofa. Five days later, I came home from being fired from my new job as a pharmacy clerk, to find Chip unconscious. Two hours later he too was dead, two days shy of his son's 10th birthday. By Spring, still jobless, I had to sell our beloved home.

And now it's Spring again. Where did those years go, and how so quickly? Even here in Maine, where I've lived fairly quietly for almost five years (that many!), the signs of renewal are appearing. The sun melts the snow and warms the mud that lies everywhere the snow is not. My beloved sister is off on her first trip to the Caribbean, and I wonder if I'll ever again have money for such extravagances. My cats and dogs want to be outdoors all day long, and I wonder if I'll ever again have a place big enough for all of us. Well-intentioned friends and my daily inspirational emails advise me not to wallow in the past, and I tell the dogs to stay out of the mud, much to the same effect.

Usually, it's in the autumn that I become restless, questioning, wanting to make changes, wanting something new. But in 2009, the advent of Spring brings me to wonder where I am, and what I'm doing. Where did those years go, and how so quickly? What will become of me, seemingly unable to keep up?

I sigh, and take a deep breath. The sun is still shining, and the lake is still frozen. I think it's time to take the dogs for a walk.