The Time Machine

Twice this week I have taken a short jaunt in the time machine...

On Monday, I was in Anchorage, driving west on Northern Lights Blvd on the way to my Dad's place. Three or four car lengths in front of me, a young couple quickly crossed the road. I looked their way as I passed by and realized they were perhaps 14 or 15 years old. Right at that moment, the time machine raced me back in time to 1973. I was walking home from high school - alone and with others - right at that very spot on Northern Lights Blvd. The west side of Anchorage - Spenard, Turnagain, Earthquake Park - is where I grew up and where my father still resides. Instantly, my mind was filled with images - memories - of the music, the kids, the teachers, my family. There was no post office there 23 years ago. Carrs Aurora Villiage was there, but what used to be the Pay 'n Pak hardware store is now a gym. An empty lot, surrounded by a chain-link fence that appears to be protecting gravel, weeds and litter, is all that remains of the local Dairy Queen, which was one of our many after-school hangouts. Shakey's Pizza Parlor is now a barber shop. Some things have changed, but others are still the same. I could see that young couple - holding hands and talking about the important things in their world...but my friends, Gretchen, John, Bin and Pat were only fond images in my mind. I gave a sigh - and the time machine brought me back to April 10, 2006, and I continued on my way to Dad's.

Then tonight, as I was in the kitchen cooking Rog's dinner, I popped in a CD that my oldest son Chris had given to me for Christmas. It was a compilation of songs from the 1980s that he had burned himself. Oh. My. Gosh. I was bopping along to Tears for Fears and Madonna and Cyndi Lauper...

if you're lost you can look--and you will find me time after time

if you fall I will catch you--I'll be waiting time after time...

This time, that faithful old time machine whisked me to Glen Caren Trailer Court, space #240. We lived there for six years - from June 1981 to June 1987. My three youngest children were born while we lived in that trailer. As I moved to the music in my Eagle River kitchen, in my mind's eye I could see the kids playing in the livingroom... I could see the old Atari game system - Pac Man, Pitfall, Donkey Kong... I could see Chris and Jamie playing with their He Man toys and Jenny with her Cabbage Patch doll and little Matthew, racing around in his walker... Overwhelming love for my kids flowed through me - and the bitter taste of sadness and disappointment in my marriage. The mixture of joy and hopelessness wrapped itself around me while I continued to stir-fry the vegetables. Then I sighed. Roggie's dinner was done and the time machine dropped me off right back in my kitchen.

I think I am a little more sensitive to the lure of the time machine right now because tomorrow - April 13 - my first-born baby turns 30. YIKES!! How can I have a child that old when, inside my brain, I'm still 25?? I like these short trips in the time machine. Sometimes I wish they'd last a little longer, but one lesson I've been hearing over and over lately is, "The Past is a nice place to visit - but you wouldn't want to live there." As much as I enjoy visiting, I want to keep moving forward, steadily and surely. I want to enter in to all that GOD has for me. As great as parts of my past were - they can't begin to compare to is up ahead!

LiC ~