It has taken 47 years, but I have finally unlocked the mystery of time. Well, that might be an exaggeration, actually. Our first personal experience with time is the moment we enter this world. The time of our birth marks our beginning. The time of our death marks our ending. And what we do between these two demarcations says everything about how we live our lives.

Our first brush with time comes with the time of birth. It is an important number and astrologists use it to determine all kinds of things past, present and future. It signals the countdown of units in our personal bank account of time.

The mystery of my first encounter with time was just solved. For years I would ask my parents the time I was born. They both struggled to remember. It wasn’t recorded anywhere. Not on my birth certificate. Not in my baby book. Not on a card or a letter or any other documentation. The only place I thought might have that information was the hospital itself. But I got the name wrong and found that the hospital I was searching for had closed.

Then my dad corrected me, citing the correct name of the medical center that still stands today. I called around and got a lovely woman named Natalie on the phone who seemed up to the challenge of entering the basement of the building to search the records on microfiche.

At first she sounded discouraged.

“1969? Oh dear. We only keep our records up here for ten years. But I’ll see what I can do.”

A day later she called and left a voicemail. I still didn’t know if she had had any luck in finding out the information.

But just now, on a rainy Thursday at the beginning of June 2016, I learned that 12:59 a.m. was my lucky number.

“One minute before 1 am, Christine! That’s when you were born.”

Nothing like sliding in at the last minute, eh?

I thanked her profusely for divulging what had haunted me since I can remember.

Now I know what time I began. Lucky for me, I don’t know how it will end. And that’s a good thing because I have a lot planned for the units I have left.

The moment is now to begin. One minute at a time.