Mother Time
Mother Time
by Colleen O’Toole | Hamilton, Ontario, Canada (formerly of Boston, MA)
“Take integration easy, it is important not to rush,” I counsel returning pilgrims in my role as a coordinator and guide.
But me? Within a month of returning from my first Camino, I had ended a ten-year relationship, quit my job, packed everything in a moving truck, fled Canada, my long-adopted country, and headed home to Boston—with zero plan.
When our relationship to time is corrupted, “Time can feel like a bully,” wisdom from the late Irish poet John O’Donohue. I have a long-standing battle with time; it’s been my taskmaster, my judge, and jury. Father Time stands watch—tick, tock.
With very little training and an undiagnosable foot injury, I was advised to cancel my first Camino Francés in September 2019; advice I ignored. That Camino called me like a visit to the Emergency Room; it could not be delayed.
While it provided good medicine, I was surprised to notice a sense of dread as it ended. Six days before Santiago, I understood what I had to do. I remember the moment so clearly, I lay awake, on a top bunk in a cold, grey albergue. I was being instructed. I had become a pilgrim, I knew how to bounce and how to carry only the essential. Once the panic settled, I felt a freedom I had not felt in decades. I had crossed an invisible threshold.
My mother, Nancy, then 88, was no longer managing well in her retirement home, so I moved us into my sister’s cottage on Cape Cod. I redesigned my life. I found myself when the world shut down in March 2020: in between lives.
Now lies a strange aspect of time, the unknown. I was starting to suspect the message, “Just another 2 weeks,” averted wide-spread panic. Isolated, hard at times, I remain grateful for spending the first year of the pandemic on Cape Cod with my mum, who died two years later.
I cherish memories made that year: cooking for mum; sharing slow meals; unhurried conversations; watching the sunrise over Nantucket Sound; feeling connected with all the people locked down across the world; standing beside my mum at the overlook at Chatham break; watching the gorgeous pink supermoon rise over the water. Finding not one, but two labyrinths to walk. Abundance!
John O’Donohue also said: “Time is the mother of presence.” Time standing still, the beauty around us, a renewed appreciation for each other, a doorway to being present, time no longer taskmaster, rather nurturing mother, reminded me of what is precious: Time points to presence.
Like many other pilgrims, my Camino was a training ground for navigating the pandemic. In addition to a new appreciation of the nature of Time, the lockdown gave birth to a beautiful cross-border friendship with a man, a fellow pilgrim, who recently became my husband. Two pilgrims, needing deep conversation, delighting in two-hour long phone calls, talking about everything and nothing.
Yes, time is sacred, but time no longer bullies me. Mother Time provides loving attention.
