Together in different time zones
I inherited my grandmother's wall clock. For most of my life, it sat perched high above the refrigerator with an air of flair unlike anything else in her home. I always thought it so fancy. When I took it down to bring it to my home I noticed the Sears & Roebuck logo and that the fancy scrollwork was simply pressed plastic. I love that clock.
Sears' finest sits on a shelf in my home still ticking as consistently as it did in 1956. The hands show the same time they always showed as well -- one hour behind my house. My grandparents lived in the next time zone over, so there was always mental math in figuring out what time it was where they lived and what they might be doing. Would they be starting supper as we finished? Would we have to wait an hour before calling so they could make it home from church? Is it too early to call and tell them what Santa Claus brought?
So now that I have the clock, I don't have to worry about that mental math anymore. They stand outside time having joined one another and the Father in heaven. Meanwhile, I'm late for baseball practice.
And even as a kid, I wondered about past, present, and future. How could we both eat supper at the same time yet not be at the table at the same time?
Then I got married. My time became our time. Her natural rhythms became our natural rhythms. She still blames me for her use of the snooze button on her alarm and I remind her that no good comes after 9:30 pm, much less midnight. We'd start and end our day in the same place, but definitely had different energy levels going into the day and closing it down at night.
Then we had kids and time became relative. As babies, the children needed care regardless of the hour or time, so my wife and I did the best we could. The hours became long and the days became short. One-on-one time and family time and mommy/daddy time and work time and rest time all stacked to conspire against us; like that Dali painting with the melting clocks. Or at least that's what it felt like.
The kids are now old enough to find the pop-tarts and the cartoons on their own, so we're not as beholden to their Saturday morning routine.
But what about my wife and I? Our natural rhythms differ by an hour or more, much like my grandmother's clock. I'm up early and she stays up late. My energy wanes as the day progresses while she has some well of vim and vigor that only appears when the Late, Late Show comes on.
How do we connect from different time zones? Like my grandmother's clock, I need to calibrate where she is relative to where I am. Is my bride's energy going up or going down? How low is her tank and where does it need to be to have the overdue budget conversation? If we mapped my natural rhythm with hers, where would they overlap?
While location is everything is real estate, timing is everything in relationships. So what do we do? We're figuring it out and learning along the way.
She's learned that questions asked after 9:30 solicit questionable responses from me and I've learned that she'll let me know when she's ready to engage the day.
We're learning to honor one another's time (and energy) by scheduling on another's calendar. For example, our Team Meeting for schedules and budgets is outside of our 1:1 time.
We're learning to lean into the differences as we did when the kids were very young, so I take the morning shifts and she takes the late slot, being free to sleep-in and go to bed without guilt
But unlike my grandmother's clock, our relationship is dynamic, shifting as our bodies change, as our kids grow and we lean into the next season. We just need to be sure we're looking at the same clock.