Time is less like an hourglass and more like sandpaper. A flank of
wood, hidden under the carpet, or under varnish and the polish of
many steps. Under the ferocious foot of my sander, it looks for
seconds like it doesn't change, as the machine wriggles its way
across the floor, my grip on the handles. It looks like it might
never change. The same floor we have seen or kept hidden for many
years, until, there it is, that rawness emerges at the crest of the
board where it is several grains taller, a difference invisible
except to the scouring teeth of the sandpaper. This naked board
spreads, contagious, across the floor under my eyes, until I see that
it is changing, in fact, it already has.
Last week we pried up the carpet in my room, hefted out the bed, and
emptied out the furniture. We brought in noisy vacuums and hammers,
sanders and webs of extension cord, and returned the room I grew up
in to its outline. After we laid down the first layer of finish on
the floor, we realized the closet light was still on. Perched across
a moat of wet polyurethane, the light was left to shine as night fell
and darkness moved in though the windows of my room.
As most of you probably recall, in the realm of monster defense the
closet light is a highly prized tool. It dissipates mysterious
shadows throughout the room, especially under the bed. With my room
emptied and the lone light peering in, I was reminded of all the
ghouls that had lingered in that room, drawn up by my imagination and
evaporated with the flick of a switch. One night I was sure an
alligator could be hiding under my bed. Mom assured me that I was
agile enough to leap over it from atop the bed, and furthermore that
an alligator's turning radius was such that it would be impossible
for it to follow me down the stairs.
We left the old bedroom carpet on the packed-dirt of the dump, rolled
up with cat hair and dog hair in the midst of the trundling tractors,
rolled up with the imprints of many steps from one little girl, one
teenager, one young woman, and maybe, just maybe, one very large
reptile. Out there under the wide Montana sky and the heavy equipment
wheels the carpet meant something else. Back home there is now a
shiny hardwood floor, an exposed surface that felt those steps as
well even when I couldn't see it.
Bare, carpeted, or finished, the floors and the shadows remind me
that we are the sandpaper. The monsters lurking in our childhood have
become the change looming in our future. As we run, and time stays,
in the floors of our houses and the walls of our body, we realize
that the truest source of our fear slumbers on the bed, not under it.
Because they are so near, the closet shadows frighten, but they are
not as close to us as our own mutability. Monsters are now fond
memories of a time when our concerns were imaginary, and could not
really stifle our dreams. The closet light reminds me of monsters
forgotten and adopted, as it glows faint to where I stand at the
bottom of the stairs. Before I leave I pause for one more second,
checking for an alligator tail disappearing around the banister.
