Chapter One — I Was Angry at Time

Another birthday.

From the morning, my phone fills with messages. Happy birthday, to 120, may you be healthy and happy. I answer everyone with a thank-you and a heart, make myself a coffee and sit down to read the greetings.

Once, not so long ago, birthdays stirred a different feeling in me.

It wasn't the party that bothered me. Nor the candles on the cake.

Time.

I was angry at it. Truly angry. The way you are angry at a person who took something precious from you and left you no way to ask for it back.

And I had my reasons.

It took people from me. Dear people I loved, who were part of my life, and one day were no longer there. The space they left behind never filled. It only learned to be quieter.

It took opportunities. Doors I passed by and did not open, because I was sure I could come back to them later.

How much confidence I once had in that word — later.

As if it were a promise.

It also took moments. Small children who fell asleep in my arms, laughter rolling through the kitchen, a small hand holding mine at a crosswalk.

Precisely the simple moments, the ones I never stopped to consider while they were happening.

No one tells you, when you lift a child into your arms, that a day will come when you will want to hold him like that again, but he will already be too big.

And time did not pass over me, either.

The face I knew in the mirror, the body I once barely gave a thought to. The changes came gradually, until sometimes only an old photograph reminded me how many years had already passed.

It was not always easy for me to accept that.

But over the years I began to ask myself whether my anger was truly justified.

⸻

This thought was born in the heart of the sea, on one of my dozens of cruises.

I stood alone on the deck and looked at the horizon. The sea spread around me, and the quiet let my thoughts wander undisturbed.

I have always loved those moments. When there is no need to get anywhere, when the legs rest and the mind, of all things, begins to move.

I thought about time.

I tried to imagine it as an entity I could turn to, ask questions, perhaps even understand something of its essence.

I did not know what shape to give it. Every figure I tried to imagine seemed too limited for something that has no age and no face.

In the end I gave up on the shape and let it be a voice within my thoughts.

"I wanted to meet you for many years," I said.

"And I have accompanied you all those years," it replied.

"I know. Maybe that is why I have so many questions."

"What would you like to know?"

I looked at the water.

"First of all — what are you, really? We measure you with clocks, divide you into hours and years, but does that measurement say anything about your essence?"

"The clock is not time," it replied. "It is only your way of marking what passes. Like a map is not the road itself."

"So what passes? You, or us?"

"That is a question human beings have asked for thousands of years. Some see me as a dimension of reality, and some see me as the way you understand change. But you do not need to decide between those views to notice one thing: everything you know changes."

Into my mind came the stars that were born before there were clocks, the trees that grew before there were calendars, and everything that existed in the world before there was a human consciousness to measure it.

"And if nothing changed?" I asked. "If everything stayed exactly as it is, would you still exist?"

"Perhaps. But how would you know?"

I smiled to myself.

I had not expected my first question to lead to an even bigger one.

"There is something else I wanted to ask you," I went on. "Something more personal."

"I am listening."

"For years I was angry at you. I felt that you take from me the people I love, the good moments, the possibilities I did not manage to realize."

"And what do you feel now?"

"I still miss them. But I have begun to wonder whether I laid on you responsibility for things you did not choose."

"I do not choose the events that occur within me," it said. "I am present at a birth as I am present at a parting, in joy as I am present in pain."

"And still," I said, "without you nothing would ever end."

"And perhaps nothing would ever begin, either. Growth requires change, and change requires time."

I fell silent.

I thought about my children. About the years when they were small, and about the people they are today.

"I want them to grow," I said, "but sometimes I miss the small children they were so much."

"Your longing does not cancel the joy in who they have become. You can feel both."

"True," I said. "Maybe we struggle to accept that life does not let us keep all the versions of the people we love at the same moment."

"Nor all the versions of ourselves."

Those words touched me.

⸻

"There is a question that accompanies me," I said after a while. "Where do the moments that have passed go?"

"What do you mean by 'where'?"

"When I think about the past, I can see it in my memory. Sometimes almost hear it. But I cannot reach it. Has it disappeared completely?"

"The event has ended," time replied. "But not necessarily everything that was born of it."

"You mean memories?"

"Memories, too. But not only. Think of a decision you made years ago that changed your life. Of a person you met who influenced who you are. Of a word you heard that still accompanies you."

I remembered the people I had lost.

They are not here, and yet there are things I do because of them. Words I use, habits I adopted, thoughts I learned from them.

"So something of them remains," I said.

"Something of their influence on you."

"But that is not the same as their presence."

"No," it replied. "And that is a difference worth honoring."

I loved that answer.

It did not try to comfort me with a promise that everything is preserved, and it did not make the loss prettier than it is.

"Sometimes," I said, "I would give a great deal to hear one familiar voice again. Even for an ordinary conversation, about nothing special."

"What would you say?"

I reflected for a moment.

"Maybe I would not say anything important, actually. Maybe I would simply want to sit and talk, like before, without knowing that this moment would one day be so precious to me."

"And perhaps that is why it is precious to you," said time. "Because in that moment you did not try to turn it into a memory. You simply lived it."

I looked at the sea.

⸻

"If you could take me back to one moment in the past," I asked, "could I choose it?"

"Which moment would you choose?"

At first the big events rose in me. Births, celebrations, moving encounters.

But the deeper I went into the question, the more I found myself returning to ordinary moments.

A family meal. An afternoon when everyone was home. A conversation with a loved one I did not know I would remember years later.

"Interesting," I said. "I do not choose the moments when something extraordinary happened."

"Perhaps because a moment's importance is not always revealed while it is happening."

"And if I went back, would I want to know what I know today?"

"What do you think?"

I tried to imagine myself sitting across from a loved one, knowing exactly how much time we still had together.

Maybe I would listen more. Maybe I would say things I did not say.

But maybe the knowledge would change the whole moment.

"I am not sure," I admitted. "I might be busy the whole time thinking about the end, and unable to enjoy what is there."

"Knowledge sometimes changes the experience itself," it said.

"So perhaps there is a certain grace in not knowing everything in advance."

"And there is pain in it, too."

"Yes," I said. "There is pain in it, too."

For a moment I felt that the conversation was not leading me to a solution, but to a deeper understanding of the question.

⸻

"And what about the future?" I asked. "We speak of it as if it is already waiting for us somewhere. Does it really exist?"

"Some think that past, present and future are part of one reality, and some see the future as something that has not yet happened. But in your life, the future is also a space of possibilities."

"Possibilities that will not all come true."

"True."

"And that is perhaps what frightens me most. Not only what will happen, but also what will not. The lives I will not live, the roads I will not choose."

"Every choice opens one road and leaves others behind."

I remembered the opportunities I had missed.

The times I told myself there would be time. Things I wanted to do and did not do, sometimes out of fear, sometimes out of responsibility, and sometimes because life led me elsewhere.

"Is it possible to live at all without missing something?" I asked.

"I do not think so. A life that has choice in it is also a life that has giving-up in it."

"So perhaps there is no point regretting anything?"

"I would not say that. Regret can teach you what matters to you. The question is whether it helps you choose differently today, or only returns you again and again to a place you can no longer change."

I pondered his words.

There were things I regretted justly. There were also decisions I made under conditions I could not change, with the knowledge and ability I had then.

I did not want to erase the regret, but I also did not want to let it define everything that was.

⸻

"There is one thing I still struggle to understand," I said. "We talk all the time about using time. Not wasting it, getting as much done as possible, filling every day with meaning. Is that really the right way to live?"

"What do you feel when you try to get everything done?"

"Sometimes satisfaction. And sometimes exhaustion. As if I am running after something that cannot be caught."

"And what happens when you stop?"

I looked around me.

I was in the heart of the sea. I was in no hurry to get anywhere. I was not doing anything considered especially useful.

And yet, those hours were precious to me.

"I think," I said. "I remember. Sometimes I simply enjoy the quiet."

"So are those wasted hours?"

"No. The opposite."

"Perhaps you do not need to measure the worth of every moment by the number of things you managed to do in it."

"But I also would not want to spend my life without doing the things that matter to me."

"There is no necessary contradiction between the two. One can act out of a desire to live, and not only out of fear of not getting enough done."

I liked that thought.

How often we hurry not because we know where we want to get to, but because we are afraid of being left behind.

And perhaps sometimes it is precisely stopping that lets us notice the road.

⸻

The sun began to go down.

The sea changed its color, and a light wind moved across the deck.

"I think I am beginning to understand something," I said to time.

"What do you understand?"

"That all these years I saw in you mainly what was taken from me. But you were present in everything I received, too. In every person I met, in every experience I had, in every change that made me who I am today."

"And are you still angry?"

I thought before I answered.

"Less. But I still miss. And there are things I would want back."

"You do not need to give up the longing in order to accept what you cannot change."

"Maybe," I said. "And I also do not want to live as if every moment is the last. There is something exhausting in the thought that you must appreciate every second. Sometimes I want simply to live, without constantly calculating how much is left."

This time I did not wait for an answer.

There was something liberating in the very possibility of saying it, without immediately looking for another conclusion.

"Thank you for the conversation," I said at last.

"What are you thanking me for?"

"For helping me see an old question in a new way."

"You brought the questions yourself," it replied. "And the answers you will keep searching for."

I smiled.

That was true.

⸻

Years have passed since that cruise.

And here I am again on a birthday, with a coffee that has already gone cold and a phone full of greetings.

I read a message from a loved one, smile, and answer.

I am no longer angry at time the way I once was.

I still miss the people I lost. There are still things I would want to do differently, and moments I would be glad to live again.

But I understand today that time was not my enemy.

It was there in all the good things, too.

In every love I knew, in every place I reached, in every year in which my children grew and I learned to know them anew.

And if I could return to that conversation on the deck, I would want to ask it one more question:

If we cannot know how much time we still have left, how do we learn to appreciate it without living all the time in awareness that it is running out?

Maybe this time, too, it would have no absolute answer.

And maybe that is just as well.

Today, when I receive a birthday greeting, I no longer dwell on the number of years.

I think of the possibility that experiences I have not known yet still await me, people I have not met yet, thoughts I have not thought yet.

And I am glad of that.

These thoughts, like many others, were born in me on the road.

In the heart of the sea, on long walks of hours, sometimes of a whole day, on flights between countries, in moments when the distance from routine lets me come a little closer to myself.

I have been gathering them for years.

I decided to write them, one by one, not because I know the answers, but because I still enjoy searching for them.

And this is my first thought along the way.

Continue to Chapter Two: The Entity of Memory

© 2026 Nurit Rozenblat. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or distributed without the author's prior written permission.