Grandma, or Momo Time
By: eunki
When she was younger, my grandma loved walking and hiking. When we walked together, she was always way ahead on her own. But now she walks slowly. Standing before stairs, she lets out a sigh and makes a face.
Has her time slowed down? That makes sense. Someone once said that as we get older, our speed of cognition declines, and so the whole world seems to move faster. She would feel her time getting faster and faster, while others see my grandma’s time slowing down.
I have thought about time these days.
In Momo, there is time of the grey gentlemen. The grey gentlemen measures life in ‘seconds.’ It takes 1,800 seconds to get a hair cut, 7,200 seconds to meet family, …, and an entire life takes 2.2-billion-blah-blah seconds. The grey gentlemen decieve people into believing they should save time, and then steal some of it away. But Momo is not decived by them, because she already has time in abundance.
Beppo the street sweeper, Momo’s friend, does not hurry even though he meets a very long road. Instead, he walks, thinking only of the next step and the next sweep. Surely, Momo counts time as Beppo does. Momo must not count time in seconds, but in her steps.
It still takes my grandma ten steps to walk ten steps, just as it always has.
Grandma’s memory is fading now. Every evening, while caring for her, my aunt and uncle play Go-Stop, a Korean card game. They must have played it hundreds of times.
Grandma’s time has gone by through hundreds of games of Go-Stop. But if she can’t tell yesterday’s game of Go-Stop from the day before, if she can’t remember when she won the money in her pocket, then does it matter whether it was hundreds of games or just one?
Still, grandma, my aunt, and my uncle passes through time of Go-Stop–the hundreds of games equivalent to one game. The grey gentlemen can’t take this time.