When I was a boy growing up in brittle Arizona heat, time didn’t have rules to obey. Time meant playing ball in the dusty neighborhood diamond until sunset, and faking a fever on weekday mornings in hopes of skipping school. It meant shooting up in height as birthdays arrived, yet never feeling any wiser as they passed. Time was, in a word, wild.
But it slowed as the years went on. I was a teenager suffocating in a small town, and time stuck like molasses. Time meant admiring my high school crush from afar, but never daring to approach her. It meant doodling instead of taking lecture notes, and counting down the years, then months, then days until graduation. Most of all, time meant dreaming of packing up for the big city to never look back.
That big city dream came true, I suppose. I folded my small-town life neatly into a suitcase and moved to New York, the biggest city I could think of. I unpacked it all in a cramped apartment I could call my own so long as rent was paid on the third of each month, no exceptions. Soon I learned that time in New York was in too big of a hurry to wait for slow out-of-staters like me. Time meant running myself ragged trying to please my manager, and it meant praying that the third of every month wouldn’t come so soon. Time meant flying back home to Arizona for a visit whenever I could, because it turned out I missed that small, sleepy town after all.
Then I met a girl, and time was just right with her. Time meant saving money to take her to dinner somewhere fancy. Time meant holding her hand when we walked past the dark alleys she was afraid of, and it meant lazing in bed on Saturday morning with her in my arms.
Ir didn’t last. She said she was sorry, but she couldn’t see a future with me in it. I said I understood, and held the door for her as she left. After she was gone, I waited for pain to kick in, but it never really did. Instead, time only meant not having to share my food with anyone else at that restaurant I used to take her. It meant that on any night I had time, I paused to stroll down the graffitied alleys she had always hurried past, partly out of admiration for their crazy colors and partly out of spite. Time meant being free and being alone.
That loneliness made itself at home, and I never managed to evict it. I concentrated on my job instead. I was promoted by my supervisor, and then I replaced him. Time meant taking days off to visit cities even bigger than New York, then flying back to work Monday through Friday, nine to five. Time meant trudging home from work through biting wind and trying to imagine tomorrow being any different from today.
It never was, but time had a sneaky way of adding up; I counted it by the silver in my hair. Time meant retiring from my job and having nothing to show for all those nine-to-five days except a shiny home that was now all mine, no exceptions. Time meant wondering if everything would be different had I not been in such a rush to leave Arizona, had I not been so eager to bury myself in my job. Time meant thinking that I should have seen more of the world before boarding that flight back to New York, and wishing that I had someone to welcome me back once I did.
But time also meant waking up early just to watch the sun rise, steaming cup of coffee warming my hand. Time meant getting away from the bright city once in a while just to see the night stars. Time meant seeing pudgy young faces with my mom’s eyes and my dad’s smile gather around the kids’ table during Thanksgiving dinner, and it meant being hailed the great-uncle who gives the best presents come Christmas.
After all these years, time has come to mean a lot of things. It must be tired from carrying so much in its ticks and tocks, but it hasn’t abandoned this old man yet. These days, I’ve been thinking about moving back to Arizona, or maybe to some city on the other side of the world.  I might track down that girl who left and ask her how she’s been in the decades since she walked away, or I might meet someone new and forget all about her. I haven’t made any plans yet, but I’m not in a hurry.  I still have time. In fact, I like to believe that I still have all the time in the world.