Today, I was trying so hard not to waste time that I almost lost it.

As I do before every trip, I spent the time before my flight busily taking care of business. My bags were packed. My travel bag with travel documents was sitting by the door along with my travel shoes. The plan was for Curtis to come home at 3:30 so I could leave for the airport at 4:00.

Leaving at 4:00 was not my idea. It is only an hour’s drive to the airport (45 minutes on a good day) which meant that I would arrive at the airport by 5 pm for my 7:15 flight. Why should I get their so early? I didn’t want to “waste my time” waiting at the airport when I could be using it “wisely” here at home.

I have a good friend who likewise doesn’t like wasting time. And so she fills every second—over fills them. She is usually so busy getting things done that she is late to everything. And so while she “uses” her time, those of us she has arranged to meet wait—some might call it “waste” our time waiting. My mother calls the “Hurry Up and Wait Syndrome,” we hurry up to be on time and then wait and wait and wait…

This notion of time—wasting it, spending it wisely, using or losing it—baffles me. We start with a set amount of time: minutes in an hour, in a day, days in a week and so on. So how can we waste it? No matter what we do, time will pass, we will use it. If we pass time doing what we want to do rather than what we should do, are we “wasting it”? Conversely, if we spend our time always doing what we are “supposed to do” or “need to do” when the tally is taken at the end of our days of time, will we better for it? Do we get a prize?

What does it mean to spend time “wisely”? If I watch out the window while Jakarta passes outside rather than read or text message or talk on the phone am I spending time wisely or wasting it? If I pass that car ride “doing something productive” at the end of the ride, I’ll have stuff done, however I will have missed the glimpse of life whizzing past; the jamu lady pouring green elixir for an old man, the baso seller stirring up a bowl of soup, the toddlers sitting on the bench, the beggars strumming guitar on the street corner, the trees sprouting from a wall…

Today, I chose to use my time getting everything that I wanted done before traveling done. As a result, I left at 4:20 rather than at 4:00. And in the car on the way to the airport, I spent the first hour wisely—reading. I spent the next hour of what should have been no more than an hour’s ride watching out the window. The scenery was wasted on me though because I spent it glaring at the heavy traffic, willing cars to move, worrying, fretting, hoping I’d get to the airport before the gate closed, because if I didn’t get to the airport on time I’d miss my flight, and so my connection and then I’d miss the Vermont College Alumni workshop I planned to attend.

In the end, who decides what exactly using our time “wisely” means?

Every moment we need to weigh how best to use the time we have, to determine what is wasting time and what is using it wisely. But that takes time…

A clay wok sits on top of my kitchen cupboard. I bought it in the Mount Ijen region of East Java. It was during a Remote Destinations trip. It had taken a full day of travel over a long, curious route— by air to Bali, by bus to the far tip of Bali, and back across to Java by Ferry, then a long, bumpy ride inland, up windy, narrow roads to reach Mount Ijen.

The area is lush and beautiful, sharply graded, deep terraces planted with rice, potatoes and other crops. Fields are plowed and furrowed by water buffalo and hand planted by wizened women in sarongs. We visited during Chinese New Years’, February 2008. It was still the rainy season so the hills, roads, fields were slippy, sloshy, muddy. The air was heavy and hot. but bright blue.

We were at the beginning of a walk through the terraces when I bought the wok. All five of the “girls” on the trip bought one. We also bought clay placenta pots—pots in which the after birth and placenta are buried after a birth. The toko, “shop” where we made our purchases was in the tiny village lining the road to our hotel. Aside from individual packets of laundry soap or shampoo, instant coffee, chips, cookies and individual wrapped candies, these clay items were pretty much all there was to buy in that slap-board, grass-roofed toko. Definitely the most interesting items, well made and decorative. Delighted to make those sales (at a rich profit, I am sure) the shopkeeper cheerfully wrapped each wok and pot and delivered them to our hotel.

On the way home from Ijen, the round, clay ring made to steady my wok, crumbled. But the wok came through fine. A happy reminder of that trip, that day, that toko.

On a more recent trip to the island of Flores, Curtis bought a big bag of coffee beans. Once home, I put them into the refrigerator. Rusnati and I had chatted about them: about how the beans needed to be cooked; about how Curtis loved his coffee.

Last night we arrived home from a long weekend in Lombok. A spicy coffee deliciousness greeted us. I went into the kitchen to see Rusnati. Smiling wide, she pointed out the bag of coffee resting, waiting on the counter.

“I cooked Mister’s coffee,” Rusnati offered. She pointed up to the cupboard, to the wok.

The wok rested in its usual spot on the cupboard. But something wasn’t right. Its lovely terra cotta color looked dirty, the design blackened, faded. It took me a minute to comprehend what had happened.

“You used the wok?” I asked.

“Yes,” Rusnati smiled and nodded. She opened the bag so I could smell the coffee beans. Gleaming with roasted oils the beans roasted richness filled my head.

“Oohh,” I sniffed. “So good,” I said, to make Rusnati happy. But inside leaden weight dampened my spirits. Sure, it was nice that she cooked the beans, but why did she have to use my wok? Why would she even think to use it? Now my lovely terra cotta wok, my Ijen souvenir, was ruined. How long will I have to leave it up there on the cupboard, all grayed and dirty-looking, before I could hide it in a cupboard or toss it out back to a shelf in the servant’s area? Why hadn’t Rusnati used her big old metal wok? The one she used to cook everything else?

Hours later, after Rusnati left, I went back into the kitchen where the scent of roasted coffee lingered, thick, rich, warm and a long ago memory of Rusnati and I talking about how her parents grew coffee back in their village wafted up. How her mother picked coffee berries off the bushes and dried them in the sun, then stored them in baskets until she had enough to roast. How she only picked the ripest berries, so at most collected a handful or so at a time. How her mother roasted the dried beans in a terra cotta wok over a wood fire, stirring slowly, tending them until the beans released their oils. How good her coffee tasted.

A sense of shame washed over me, then, mixed with a sense of being loved and cared for richer than any roasted coffee. To think that one day, while we were off lazing at the beach, leaving Rusnati to mind our home, she had looked up at that wok and remembered. And so, short, little Rusnati had climbed up onto the cupboard, carried down that wok—so like those back in her village—taken out that bag of Flores coffee beans, and lovingly stirred and tended and roasted those beans as a welcome home gift.

I had been so wrong. The wok wasn’t less beautiful now that its terra cotta coloring was grayed from use. It was velveteen rabbitish: grayed and burnished, worn from being well-used by loving hands.

That wok is going to stay right were it is, on top of the cupboard— unless Rusnati needs it to roast Curtis more beans—the first thing I see each time I walk in the kitchen.

My grandmother, Nanny, was born today–103 years ago. She was the 3rd child of Manuel and Ellen Balthazar. She was named Ellen Kathryn, but everyone called her “Nellie.” My brother named her Nanny and my grandfather, Poppy. (My uncle, called “Tex” because his last name was Texiera, hated that name; he said his mother was neither a goat nor a nursemaid.) Respecting him, and begin teens, my brother Joe and I shortened my grandmother’s name to “Nan”—when we weren’t calling her “Smelly Nelly”, “Stinky Dupes” or “Stinky Meeks,” (all names referring to female parts) All names she threw back her head and laughed at. When I remember Nanny, I remember her laughing.

My mother went to the hospital 3 times to have me. On the last trip, the doctor sent her out to walk until the contractions were closer together. Nanny and her younger sister, Aunt Evelyn, were with her. Nanny and Aunt Evelyn  got “tickled” at mom waddling along, mad and miserable which made her madder, which made them laugh harder. They laughed so hard they couldn’t stand up anymore, so they sat down on the curb—with mom glaring–and wet their pants laughing. When the nurse came out to check on Mom, they were embarrassed to stand up and let her see the wet spot, so Mom had to go in alone.

Nanny’s kitchen was our family’s favorite gathering spot. There was always a pot of coffee waiting, cookies in the cookie jar (usually peanut butter or oatmeal) and cards at hand. Many evenings passed with all of us, including the cousins, packed around the table playing Liverpool rummy for a quarter game-5 cents a hand and low score takes the pot. Nanny was a ruthless card player, and sometimes she won. She’d gloat when she was about to go out. “Oh my,” or “would you look at this?” she’d say. Then one by one she’d lay down her cards. It would be our turn to laugh when the hand she gleefully laid down was the wrong one.

The only left-hander in the family, Nanny taught herself to knit, crochet, tat, and embroider by watching yarn sales people. In those days, yarn companies would send employees out to stores to give handicraft lessons and demonstrations to increase sales. Nanny would watch the reflection of the demonstrations in the store window and learn in reverse. My mother and I are also left-handed, and Nanny was always happy to teach us what she knew, and fix our mistakes, and finish our projects. Her motto: “make the back as pretty as the front.”

Joe and I spent summers in Watsonville at my grandparent’s 2-bedroom house. He’d sleep in the front bedroom with Poppy, who went to sleep early and snored. Nanny and I slept in the back room were we’d whisper sleep meditations—”toes relax, feet relax, shins relax. knees relax”—which never worked. Bored and lonely in the front room, Joe would creepy crawl down the hall and try to sneak under our bed without us catching him. Then suddenly, he’d lunge up and POUNCE! I’d scream and Nanny would laugh.

My son Max was a beautiful baby with blond curls, big eyes, and a really big, round Charlie Brown head. One day Nanny and Mom decided to see just how big his head was so they took him to the store and tried hats on him. None of the boy hats fit, so they decided to try the ruffled girlie hats on him, the fussier the better and laughed until they cried.

A meticulous housekeeper, Nanny dust mopped her kitchen daily, sometimes more often. When my daughter Lexi was about 2, she’d race to the dust mop, stand on top and wrap her arms around the handle. Nanny would shake the handle and holler at her to “get off, Lexi…get off right this instant.” Lexi just looked up at her scolding and giggled—it was all part of the dust mop ride.

We laughed at Nanny’s funeral. I was sitting in the front pew with Mom, Max and Alexis, Aunt Evelyn and her husband, Uncle Joe. Alexis, just old enough to pay attention to the happenings at her first Catholic mass, got the giggles when she noticed “the old people sticking their tongues out” at the priests giving communion. Lexi has a laugh that rolls up from her belly, the contagious kind, and before long we were all laughing. Mom kept trying to shush us, which made us all, especially Aunt Evelyn, laugh louder. “Nellie would have loved this,” she said. And we all knew it was true.

Pour a “hot” cup of coffee—”milk and 2 sugars, please”—pass around the cookie jar and break out the cards for one more game of Liverpool. Deal Nanny in!