"Time Has Come Today" (1967)

The rules have changed today

I have no place to stay

Thinking about the subway

Love has flown away

-- "Time Has Come Today," The Chamber Brothers

Time. We trust Time because we know what's coming next. At a time of great uncertainty -- during these unprecedented times -- Time is there to comfort us.

As sure as the sun will rise, Time is there to catch it. Throughout the year, a different number every day. But a number all the same. Like money comes in numbers.

Money is time. Nevermind that it sounds better the other way around, first, and then what I wrote. Nevermind that.

I was five when a visitor came to our house, drank too much and I saw him in the morning, sitting in the living room buttoning up his white shirt, his pale winter feet poking out from the legs of his grey flannel slacks. The sun was coming up and he said, "C'mere, I wanna show you something."

He opened the doors to the patio and took from his pocket a nine ounce gold bar, which he held up high, to where it came alive, as if from the inside.

"You know what this?" he asked me, and I said "Sunshine."

I had no memory of this until my mother told me about it years later, when I was in my thirties. The man had told her the story, and as she told me, I was back in time, recalling details that she corroborated. When I told her the story a couple months ago, she had no recollection of it. "Do you know who this man could have been?" I asked, and without hesitation she said, "He sounds a lot like your father."