Betty Smith includes many memorable details of the life Francie Nolan growing up in poverty and instability in “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.” A book of great spirit and good humor, one of the most delightful details is about the extravagant role of coffee in Francie’s home. Smith wrote, “There was a special Nolan idea about the coffee. It was their one great luxury. Mama made a big potful each morning and reheated it for dinner and supper and it got stronger as the day wore on.”
Francie and her brother take their coffee several times a day but can’t stomach the strong chicory flavor. Often, Francie just holds the cup and enjoys the smell and warmth before discarding it, an extravagance that shocks her extended family. To the critics, Francie’s long-suffering mother replies, “Francie is entitled to one cup each meal like the rest. If it makes her feel better to throw it way rather than to drink it, all right. I think it’s good that people like us can waste something once in a while and get the feeling of how it would be to have lots of money and not have to worry about scrounging.”
Katie Nolan’s wisdom applies to more than money. Time is the other limiting factor for all of us, and, unlike money, we all have the same number of hours in every day. There can be a temptation toward obsessive efficiency, constant business, and a need to constantly accomplish. But there remains a human need to luxuriate, savor, and waste time.
Instead of fretting about time not used to maximal efficiency, we could instead enjoy deeply what time is given in truly extravagant ways. Of course, not at all hours. Food must be acquired, bills paid, the house tidied. But in order to prepare ourselves for a life beyond time, the eternity we crave in our small and limited existence, we must have some foretaste of the infinite surplus of forever.
Children especially, not yet responsible for the cares of this world, deserve the opportunity to luxuriate in their time, using it on unproductive, silly, and wasteful things that carve out the interior of a life worth living.
Efficiency and productivity have their place and are a great aid to the ordered life. Behaving magnanimously, extravagantly, and even sometimes recklessly with the time we are given is still essential.
