Time Travel

I love to be outside at night. I always have, I don't know why. I loved it as a kid and I love it now. There's something...magical about it for me. Some of my best memories are of night time adventures or exeriences.


I used to love to ice skate (along time ago, in a distant galaxy, far, far away.) Occasionally, I'll hear a song on the oldies station that takes me right back to Eton Rink. The music, skating with girlfriends or the occasional boy (be still, my heart) then walking home in the snow. The midnight blue of the sky, the cold that stung all around you. Life was great ~

Summer nights, too...riding my bike with my posse, transistor radio on the handlebars, too cool for school. Talking for hours on street corners in our neighborhood, goofy flirting with those boys again, silly expressions of 'like.' A tennis ball to the back of the head, or one of them snapping your (newly aquired) bra strap..had to be in when the street lights came on.



Now, I like to walk at night, but am not as uninhibited as I was back then. Before, we threw caution to the wind, there was no need to feel apprehensive, like we do now, in the city.




Haven't you ever opened a bottle of cologne, or heard a song on the radio that absolutely transported you back through time, to a softer, gentler place when the world was yours and you knew it ? Or be reminded of someone vital to you, at that time?


That happens to me, more and more often since I retired. I don't have so much on my mind now that I'm not working, I can't take it home with me, or worry about things on my schedule. Meetings, patients, all of it really, shaped me for so many years. Now, without all that structure, it's easy to look back instead of forward all the time.



I'm more sentimental now. I hadn't anticipated that.



A favorite move, like "Going my Way" transports me to my home and my family and all of us lying around to watch it, the floor, the furniture, wherever there was room. We didn't realize then that the chances of us all ever being in the same room again were slim. Now it takes a wedding or a funeral, so the dynamic is forever changed.


I get choked up at mass, too. I've always loved the mass, but for some reason, lately, it takes me back too. I guess it's recognizing how much being a 'cradle catholic' identifies me. Womb to tomb, it's the one thing that is a constant.


So, it's kind of nice, now, after being on this crazy ride for so long, to slow down, sit back and enjoy the view.


It would take another lifetime to remember it all, good and bad, so I choose the good, and sometimes, revel in it.

The past is never dead, it is not even past.  ~William Faulkner