#87 A WOMAN'S BRIEFS -- HAPPY NEW EIGENZEIT! 2026

“That woman is a controller,” he said. He, being my husband.

“Who?” I asked.

“The woman at the counter,” he replied, shouldering a 25-pound bag of dog food.

“The woman in the plaid shirt?”

“Plaid shirt?” He was puzzled.

“The customer who just walked away from the counter?”

“No,” said he. “The woman working at the register.”

“The clerk?”

We neared the counter, and the clerk, so I asked no further questions while Scooter’s dog treats and kibbles fit for a king got paid for.

 “Would you like some help to the car with that?” Clerk asked.

“No thanks, we’re good,” said husband.

“We’ll give you some help out with that,” said Clerk quite kindly. I suspect the thought is that a white-bearded elderly man should be more sensible.  

 “No thanks,” said he as a second clerk places the big bag on a cart and accompanies us out into the Pacific Northwest’s early evening darkness and rain-washed wind. Husband opens the trunk; second clerk places the bag there, and leaves us with a warm “Good Evening and Happy New Year!”

 “The Clerk at the counter is a controller?” I ask. “You were able to determine that in the few minutes we were in the store?”

“You were at the dog treat bins. You didn’t hear her,” came his reply.

“Ah,” I say, anticipating the story as we pull away from our parking space. “Tell me.”

And he does.

 “Excuse me sir,” he says she said as we entered the store, and he manually pushed the Entrance door closed. The wind was fierce and very, very cold. He was closing the door quickly. But what does he know, this Ancient of Days with the beautiful beard.

“The door closes itself. Automatically,” she says.

 By this time, I had already secured a plastic bag, and was scooping small, variously flavored treats from various bins. I hadn’t heard that exchange.

“Maybe she thought you didn’t realize the door takes care of itself,” I said. “Maybe she was being helpful,” We were, by the time of this suggestion, in a long Boxing Day line of automobiles attempting to enter the freeway heading east.

 Then, skillfully merging into traffic, this fighter-pilot, yacht-captain, automatic-door-closer continues his story, “Then, when I stepped on the scale, she—"

“You did what?”

“Stepped on the scale. It’s accurate by the way,” he said. “She said, ‘Sir, that scale is for dogs.’ So I barked.”

“You weighed yourself on the dog’s scale? You barked?”

“It’s a scale, Barb.”

“And you call her a controller; she who politely pointed out the obvious. Like the door is automatic, and the sign says, ‘Dog Scale’? Shall we talk about the man who knows better, and chooses to, to what . . . control the situation?

 Let me introduce you to a great German word: Eigenzeit. It has to do with situations. From the book, “FI,” by Alexandra Fuller. Eigenzeit:

“Meaning, roughly, the time needed for a thing to happen is intrinsic to the thing that’s happening. The time it takes for a mango to ripen, for example, or for a broken heart to heal, or for a river to reach the sea, is the theme it takes for those things to happen, but you can’t put an exact number on it.”

 Etymologically speaking, the word comes from Eigen (own) + Zeit (time). This is not clock-time. This is occurrence. This is the ‘time’ it takes for me to decide to write about eigenzeit; or say, for a friendship to be recognized, or for the effect of a Vivaldi sonata to move from your brain to your gut.

 The Koine Greek, the everyday language of worlds of Alexander the Great and of my seminary classes, had two words for time:

Chronos (χρόνος) and Kairos  (καιρός)s. Chronos is Clock time, and Kairos is, well, qualitative time, like eigenzeit.

It’s this simple. Kairos and Eigenzeit refer to the right time, meaningful time, what happens in time, or as we might say sarcastically, “Take your own sweet time,” rather than how much time as in seconds, minutes, or hours passes.

It was Eigenzeit time operating for my husband in the Pet Store; time intrinsic to the thing happening. It was ‘his own time,’ and he was enjoying it.

It is Eigenzeit. Typical of German words, it doesn’t easily roll around in our mouths. It requires good shaping, like the use of it. It is, I think, a word deserving some thought as clock time carries us into a New Year. I’m wishing you all a Happy one!