Minutes

Someone has given N. a phone. “It’s only for emergencies,” she reported. “It gets 200 minutes per month.”

That’s not many, I said.

“I know,” she said. “Last month I went through them all in ten days so I had to wait ’til the start of this month before I could use it again.”

What about texting? I asked because throughout our little trip her thumbs had hardly paused.

“That takes minutes too,” she said, then explained the complicated formula which converted texts to minutes.

Don’t you think you should save some of your minutes for later in the month? I asked. I’d never before felt so much like her mother.

“What for?” she responded. “When I run out I’ll just stop using the phone for a few weeks.”

She began rummaging through her stack of CDs so I let the matter drop. We suffered through listened to Evanesence, Eminem and Lil Jon for decades a solid hour before I finally could take no more. I get to pick the next cd, I said, and the moment Insane Clown Posse finished wailing I slid in something a little easier to think around.

So, this new boyfriend, I began.

“What about him?” She’s always been forthcoming about her partners; she’d sung the praises of this new man with each of the approximately ninety-seven-thousand texts they’d exchanged.

Are you using condoms every time? And are you still taking the pill?

The response to the latter was not quite so vigorous as to the former. “I still have to buy a new pack,” she said, “but I’ll do that soon.”

Honey, I said, you have to take them every single day, every single month. You can’t skip. But the new partner hadn’t been in the picture when the last pills ran out, she explained patiently, as if to a very small child. She didn’t think she would need them.

“But you never know when the opportunity might…”

“Pop up?” she helpfully interrupted.

I’m worried about you, I told her once we stopped giggling. I don’t want you to have another pregnancy you’re not ready for. I don’t want you to have to place another baby. I don’t think I could handle it again, I didn’t tell her.

Her answer could not have been more breezy. “I’ll be fine. I’m not going to get pregnant again. And if I did, I’ve got people who could take the baby for me ’til I got myself together. Not you,” she added, unnecessarily.

I gave up. What else could I say to someone who lives so fully in the moment that she neither counts her cell-phone minutes nor troubles her mind about the prevention of conception?

While I stewed she turned her attention to the boy; they jabbered about the adventures we’d enjoyed over the past few days. When the music stopped I fumbled the “eject” button. Impulsively she grabbed my hand away from the radio and squeezed it hard and in a rush of words (there might have been a few tears too) thanked me for including her on the trip and in the kids’ lives.

She sounded so happy, so genuinely grateful and thrilled to have been included on our simple little trip. As I kissed her hand and thanked her for being with us, I thought this, this is the upside of living in the moment.

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?
–Matthew 6:25-27