And so I've begun a new year--two days into year 68.  The weekend was fun with all the visitors from KC and the meals out (one more couple is coming from KC for lunch tomorrow), the cards (both paper and e-cards), texts, e-mails, and phonecalls, including several from France (I'll admit that I've got an easy birthday date to remember), and I'd be disingenuous if I didn't include the presents, including a beautiful pink gold watch from Mohamed. 

I've always wondered whether teachers were more conscious of time passing than people in most other professions.  Most of our classes are 50 minutes long, and that rhythm became, for me at least, absolutely instinctive.  When I'd give a talk outside the classroom, I never timed it or worried about how much material to prepare.  Speaking for 50 minutes was just natural.  In the spring of 2011, I gave a lecture in the Last Lecture series at Washburn.  When I accepted, I thought I was in good health, but by the time I gave it, the cancer had been diagnosed.  Still, I stuck with my original plan to talk about luck and serendipity in my career and avoid "words of wisdom" (i.e., platitudes).  I knew I had material for a 45-minute talk and was happily moving through the speech when, at about the 30-minute mark, I noticed the organizers whispering about wrapping it up.  Now that threw me.  I wasn't going to abandon my conclusion, but my second major point was truncated (and disorganized).  For teachers, our lives are also marked out by the rhythm of semesters: four months of teaching, a month off, four months of teaching, three months off.  Dusting off an old syllabus and adjusting the dates, ordering books, writing exams, and grading, grading, grading--these are all parts of a regular cycle.  Sometimes I'd tell a joke in say, Advanced Comp., one of those regular bits of humor that I'd try to pretend were spontaneous rather than tried-and-true, and I couldn't remember whether I'd already told it--and if so to another section of the class or last semester or sometime in the distant past.  And we watch time pass as the gap between our age and that of our students keeps growing.  When I started teaching at OU, I was 21--three years older than the traditional students.  By the time I retired, the gap was nearly five decades.  References and allusions that I had shared with students for many years fell completely flat.  E. A. Robinson's poem "Richard Cory" was made into a song by what group, I'd ask.  It wasn't just that no one knew, but that no one even knew who Simon and Garfunkel were.  It's hard not to be aware of time's passing when you teach.

Now, in a more diminished life, there are still but constant small markers of time.  Every night, it's preparing the coffee so that I'll come downstairs to the smell of morning joe and the viewing of "Morning Joe."  Every morning, it's trying to remember which side of my stomach gets the anti-coagulant shot.  If it's Tuesday one week, it must be the right side; if it's Tuesday the next week, it must be on the left.  Every three days it's writing the blog.  Today, like every Monday, it's taking the trash out.  Was it really a week ago that we did it last?  It seems like just a couple of days ago.  Every month or so, it's inventoring the many bottles of pills to see which ones need re-ordering. Every six weeks (it used to be every month), it's a trip to KU Med for tests (at least bloodwork) and a consultation.  Every three months it's the whole battery of tests.  On the 30th, I'll go for bloodwork, CT scans, a full-body x-ray, a bone-stengthening shot, and normally a consultation.  This time the oncologist isn't available on the 30th, so we go back on Aug. 3 to talk over the results with him.  The day of tests isn't painful or even particularly unpleasant or worrisome, but it's long and tiring.  It also costs the taxpayers $22,000, $12,000 of which is just for the shot.  And every three months, the seasons change.  The giant cottonwood tree in the back yard starts to lose its leaves early, already in the heat some of the leaves have fallen, but it hangs on to its last few leaves until winter is here.  Every year I think of Shakespeare's sonnet, "That time of year thou mayst in me behold / When yellow leaves or none or few do hang..."  and wonder about the sequence: shouldn't 'few' logically come before 'none'?  In the late fall, the cottonwood is often full of blackbirds, and I think of Stevens's poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird."  Some at least of the poetry (and stories and novels) that I taught for so many years are etched in my mind. 

Another day and week and season and year pass.  I'll put on my new watch and hope that friends notice it so I can show it off, as it mechanically and indifferently ticks off the passing seconds.