Time, it is a-changin’

How long have I observed home confinement? I’m not really sure. Checking my calendar, I see I returned from my last work trip on March 13. I think I started shortly thereafter — started staying at home, I mean.

“Where has the time all gone to? Haven’t done half the things I want to.” That is not Aretha Franklin, but Leonard Bernstein, in On the Town. Or rather, it’s his lyricists, Comden and Green.

Recently, I was at Pinkberry, getting some soft serve ice cream. (I do get out, within bounds.) The young woman behind the counter said, “Have a good weekend.” I said, “Oh, yeah: It’s Friday.” We both smiled. Does the weekend mean anything anymore? To some people, it means a little less than before.

I have a friend who’s been retired for some years now. He describes his life this way: “Every day is Saturday.” For me, every day is Saturday in one sense. I used to take a long walk on Saturday, along a particular route. I do that every day now (masked, etc.).

Did you notice that I said “I used to”? Those words have been creeping into my speech: “I used to travel,” “I used to go to concerts,” “I used to …” I should stamp that out.

Time is a funny thing, to put it mildly. As a rule, people have too much time or too little. They are either harried or bored. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say, “I have just the right amount of activity. I have neither too much time on my hands nor too little.” That would be a golden mean.

Long ago, I had a feeling of idleness. I thought of a phrase: “the lazy leaden-stepping hours.” Since then, I have mainly fought for hours, and even minutes.

Now that I have broken out John Milton — those words, about the sluggish hours, are from his poem “On Time” — I should break out Thomas Mann. His novel The Magic Mountain is, among other things, a meditation on time. Here is a choice sentence: “When one day is like every other, then all days are like one, and perfect homogeneity would make the longest life seem very short, as if it had flown by in a twinkling.”

Lately, I’ve heard the word “blur.” “It’s all been a blur,” people tell me about their coronatime experience. I also hear about the movie Groundhog Day. That’s the 1993 hit about a guy trapped in a time loop, forcing him to live one Feb. 2 over and over.

When you spend a holiday break at home, you can fall into a pleasant routine: wearing pajamas late into the day, sleeping at odd hours, maybe not showering much. My brother-in-law has been known to say, “I’ll be soap-dodging all weekend.”

At first, for some, the shutdown was kind of fun. Like an unexpected holiday break. But then this “break” stretched into weeks, and months. Mark Helprin, the writer, reminded me of something chilling the other day: People used to speak of “the plague years.”

Everyone is in a different situation, making it hard to generalize. Some are at home with spouses or partners. Some are at home with children. Some have roommates about. Some are by themselves. Some are working, as before. They are doing their usual office work at home. Some are actually out working, in grocery stores or factories, not to mention hospitals. Some are not working at all.

For countless people, the shutdown is a time of unemployment, fear, illness, death. A breezy little article like mine will be contemptible to them. My apologies.

I am working, lucky dog. (I consider myself lucky to be working in normal times.) My deadlines come fast and furious. “A deadline is your best friend,” I once heard William F. Buckley Jr. say. He worked, meeting deadlines, right up to the last.

And yet, some people are able to see past their working lives, thanks to the shutdown. “I never thought I could be retired,” said a friend of mine. He has a job that takes him all over the country, and world. “But now, I think I can do it. I’ve really liked being at home.”

Married couples? Some of them are doing just great, I understand. They may even be rediscovering each other — in a good way, that is. For others, that way is not so good. In Japan, there is the phenomenon of “corona divorce.” It is a genuine national problem, much written and fretted about.

I know parents who love having their children at home, particularly older children, who otherwise would be away from Mom and Dad. For these parents, the shutdown is partly a gift. Regardless, a lot of parents have their hands full — full to overflowing. They are finding the job of being a parent, a challenging one in any season, more challenging than ever.

On March 24, a man with the excellent hybrid name of Winston Chang achieved Twitter fame by writing: “If there’s a baby boom in 9 months, it’ll consist entirely of first-born children.”

Everyone has challenges, including people who live alone. For one thing, they don’t have to keep up appearances. If they did not stir themselves to dress, shower, make their bed, etc., would anyone care? They themselves have to care. Some do, some don’t.

My grandmother knew a lady who, one day, became a widow. She lived alone. She could have eaten dinner standing up in her kitchen, or propped up in her bed. Instead, she set a table with linen, silverware, and china — plus a candle, plus a flower in a slim vase. She thought it important to her mental health.

I myself knew a lady — a writer — who, after working in an office for some years, started to work at home. Before sitting at her desk in the morning, she dressed nicely, did her hair, and — get this — put on makeup. There was not a soul to see her. But these things made her work better, she thought, and they surely made her feel better.

A person who is home alone and idle faces a danger: too much time to think. He may turn inward, in unproductive ways. Indeed, he can age and die. Can think himself to death, so to speak. An old spiritual comes to mind: “Lord, I keep so busy workin’ for the kingdom, I ain’t got time to die.”

My own life has proceeded relatively normally in “this time of pandemic.” (I have written this phrase so often, I feel I should put it in quotation marks.) Yet I, too, have sensed time changing a bit, in certain ways.

Here’s one: Recurring events seem to recur faster than before. Give you an example. Like millions of others, I am watching The Last Dance, the 10-part documentary about the 1990s Chicago Bulls, on Sunday nights. I am about to watch the newest installment now. It seems like yesterday, or three days ago, that I was watching the previous installment.

Another thing: Since I have far fewer appointments than usual, the ones I do have, even a simple phone call, seem like impositions. I don’t know why. They just do. Maybe a person gets used to living in his own private Idaho and resents even the slightest intrusion.

There is a ritual in my neighborhood, which I like a lot. Every evening at 7, people cheer out their windows for healthcare workers and the like. For me, this is like the striking of Big Ben or something. It is a beautiful daily sound. I’ll miss it when it’s gone.

For a long time to come, people will remember the year 2020, “this time of pandemic,” a time of shutdown. How was it for you? Did you have a “good war?” as they used to say. Did you come out of it in good shape? Better than when you went into it? Did the time result in personal growth?

In Groundhog Day, the protagonist, trapped in the time loop, does not stay the same. No, he sheds faults, learns lessons, and emerges a greatly improved man. (He even gets the girl.)

There’s a lot more to say about time, this endlessly interesting subject, but I am out of time, and I will close with an old hymn — written by Ellen M. H. Gates. The hymn contrasts time with eternity. In fact, it’s called “Eternity.” My favorite line is, “O the clanging bells of Time! Soon their notes will all be dumb …”

Jay Nordlinger is a senior editor of National Review and a book fellow at the National Review Institute.