Gratitude

Time, Time, Time / See What’s Become of Me

Appreciating the spaces between events (and The Bangles)

When I was a kid, The Bangles had a big hit with “Hazy Shade of Winter,” which my mom was quick to point out wasn’t their original song but had been recorded by Simon and Garfunkel. My mom seemed to enjoy pointing out when things that I thought were new and innovative had actually been around for longer than I’d been alive.

I liked the world-weary attitude of the song, as the speaker tries to decide if it’s really “the springtime of [her] life” or if winter has come for real. At first, it’s just the vague look of winter, but by the end, “leaves are brown,” and “there’s a patch of snow on the ground.”

Maybe it’s the autumn of the speaker’s life if you look at the imagery. But really I liked to look at the tiny pictures of all four of The Bangles on the foldout from the cassette for their Different Light album.

(Note to Bangles fans: I didn’t have the single or the soundtrack for Less Than Zero on which “Hazy Shade of Winter” appeared, but as you know, the song played on the radio and MTV all the time.)

In a lot of their songs, maybe just one of The Bangles sings lead (like Susanna Hoffs in “Manic Monday”), or they alternate verses (like in “Walk Like an Egyptian”). But in “Hazy Shade of Winter,” they sing together, and you can hear the layers of their voices the whole time.

I always listened for the low voice of the bassist, Michael Steele. She wasn’t the “main” singer or most popular member of The Bangles. Think of George Harrison in The Beatles — he backed up Paul and John a lot, but you always know a George song when you hear it.

I had a big crush on Michael Steele, but at the time I didn’t know it was a crush. I thought she was really cool, how she dressed in dark, velvety clothes and maybe a denim jacket and a black bolero hat. Her hair was always, well, some kind of hazy shade of red, depending on the music video.

I could talk to you about The Bangles all day. What got me thinking of them was Trista’s writing prompt about restful happiness. Having time feels restful to me, which made me think of the “time, time, time” lyric from the start of “Hazy Shade of Winter,” and here we are.

Once I read or heard somewhere that time is the perception of space between events. This made immediate sense to me, and I’ve never forgotten it. Unfortunately, I forgot who said it. I’ve tried googling to find the author, but I’ve never been able to find it.

When I have a tightly booked day with minimal space between activities, I feel that I have no time. When I feel I have no time, I tend to get stressed. I like time to think and reflect and not to hurry.

Sometimes I remember being a kid in the 1980s and listening to my cassettes and watching MTV with my brother, and I feel like I’ve had all the time in the world: there’s so much space between those events and the events of today.

My brother and I are now in our 40s; his two little boys look so much like him in certain moments that I’m half-surprised they’re not wearing Seattle Supersonics t-shirts and turquoise Chuck Taylor All-Stars.

Then sometimes it’s like no time has passed at all, and my brother and I are getting into the wood-paneled station wagon with our parents to pick up our grandma and take her out with us for dinner. At dinner, she’s going to say, “What a beautiful pizza!” and my brother is going to joke with her that she needs to get out more, and she’s going to tell him he’s the one who needs to appreciate being out to dinner and eating such a nice pizza.

When I got Different Light for Christmas, my grandma asked who The Bangles were, and I showed her all their pictures and told her what instruments each played. We listened to a little of it on my new boombox, and I explained whose voice was whose.

My grandma died a few years ago when she was 96, but she’d always said she was “39 and holding.” We’d ask her how old she was, and she’d never tell. We’d try to sneak a look at her driver’s license, and she’d hide it from us.

I was 39 the year my grandma died. Like The Bangles explained to me back in 1987, I knew that time wouldn’t stand still for any of us, but I also understood the desire to let it slow down for a moment when you could.