Time travel

We are all out of our own time much of the time. But I don’t want to - here on this page - to lament this human condition, for time traveling is what we all must do. It is true that it is good to be in the moment – to be yourself, here and now. But to be human, we must extend ourselves back to who we were and on out to who we might become.

And so I sat in a coffee shop, sipping on a straw that was anchored in a pink, fizzy, creamy drink. The dishwasher, on break, sitting next to me, blew the end of the paper wrapper of his straw into the hair of the barista on the other side of the counter. She looked up at him and her eyes said it all. But I won’t tell you what. Then this is what the other barista said - first her pony tail swinging to the music, then her hands scrubbing clean the lipstick from a white coffee cup at the sink: “I’m nostalgic for the summer I haven’t had yet.”

It was early spring. The sun bright against the bagel shop across the street. The shadow of a lamppost low on the pale yellow wall looked as if it might walk on down the sidewalk. But the air was still late winter cool. And I was drinking pink and eventually I would be sucking on ice.

How could anyone so young be nostalgic?  I thought. And then my mind slipped and I was young. I was something of a fool then, not because I was young, but because I had failed to learn what, at a more advanced age, would seem like some small wisdom. Actually, I am often amazed at what children and young people know that I never knew, although maybe I did know more then than I now have recalled that I did or did not know then. But never mind. I think the lamppost shadow might have moved.

A scene flashed into my mind. Young people – call them kids. Our faces I cannot now see, but we are sitting in the Pizza Hut, waiting for a pizza. We are blowing the ends of the wrappers of our straws at each other. What did our eyes say to each other? I cannot tell you - because I cannot clearly remember so far back in time, although I think that I just caught a glimpse from the window of my time machine as we passed by. There must have been, back then, some of what I now think that I saw through my older eyes as I sat here at the counter.

But you see, it doesn’t really matter. Now I’m already nostalgic for the summer I haven’t had yet. I would tell you all about it, but if you can remember, I haven’t lived it yet. But it will surely be as sweet as a strawberry-peach cremosa. Or maybe an egg crème. Or maybe I’ll fall in love again. And then too soon I will be sitting here again, the lamppost shadow long gone, looking back on this very day and wondering how I could have possibly been so young.

- for Alejandro, Cheyenne, and Bailie