Dad and Me, 1937

My mother used to say that there were two things my father couldn’t count – time and money.  If such flaws can be attributed to one’s DNA, then I am definitely my father’s daughter!  I think Mom had it just a little bit wrong, though. It’s not that Dad had trouble with the counting part – it’s just that the numbers ran out too soon.  Or at least that has been my experience.

Actually, I’ve come to grips with the money part: there just isn’t enough of it.  Ever.  But the time part gets more and more serious as the years go by.  It marches on at a faster, ever faster pace.  Soon Christmas will be here even before we’ve enjoyed summer and whatever projects I’m working on will be filed under Unfinished Historical Endeavors by the Ancients.

I have a vague notion that Einstein’s Theory of Relativity which, I confess, I do not fully understand, comes into play here.  However, I do know that part of it deals with the relationship of space and time and that, according to Wikipedia, there is something called “time dilation” which is explained thus:  Moving clocks are measured to tick more slowly than an observer’s “stationary” clock.

Whoa Nellie! (Actually, Molly) 1945

Whoa Nellie!  That seems to mean that the faster I move along, the more time I’ll have – but you won’t think I do.  So, it’s a matter of perception and perspective!  Which is very relieving because, as I’ve mentioned previously (perhaps many times), my own Theory of the Importance of Things is that “Appearances Are Everything.”  So… if I appear to be getting a lot accomplished in x amount of time (even though from my viewpoint, I’m moving and top speed and accomplishing very little), there is nothing to be concerned about; I must be using my time wisely and getting lots done after all.

I try to co-ordinate those very heady thoughts with the fact that Einstein loved to sail and that he didn’t wear socks.  Those are the two things that endeared him to my Uncle Willard who went sailing with Dr. Einstein at Princeton – the terms under which the great physicist would grant Willard an interview.  During the course of the afternoon, claimed Willard, “He almost ran us into a sandbank, until I grabbed the tiller.  I always feel I saved the Unified Field Theory.”

Einstein on his sailboat Tinef

I wish they had discussed something more along the lines of why there is less time as you age and what that has to do with time is money and why our family can’t count either of them.  Now that would have been an interview worth having.  And I might have figured out how to get a lot more accomplished simply by lounging on my private beach in St. Tropez.