My husband, son and daughter are science fiction fans. They love Star Trek (every generation) and Star Wars, Dr. Who and any other show that includes time travel and extra dimensions. So I’m wondering why I’m the first person in our family to have actually engaged in time travel.
It happened last Friday when I accompanied my mother on a lunch date. She wanted me to meet some people she recently reconnected with, former sixth grade students from the first class she taught in the late 1940s. She’d gone to their 50th class reunion back in June, but there were plenty of old memories left to share in September.
The time travel part started as soon as we entered the restaurant. “Miss Hess is here,” one of the students announced. They all looked at my mother and smiled. “Miss Hess?” I thought. “I never knew her when she was Miss Hess. Too weird.”
“Miss Hess,” another student told her, “you have to sit in the middle so we can all talk to you. We’ll save your place while you pay for lunch.” “Don’t forget to ask for your senior citizen discount,” someone else reminded her. “We all got ours.”
I was feeling younger by the minute. First my mother had become someone she’d been before I existed. Now I was the only person in the room who didn’t qualify for the senior citizen discount. Since Mom treated me to lunch, I didn’t have to suffer for being such a spring chicken. I kind of enjoyed being the youngest in the room, something that’s been happening less and less often of late/
For the next few hours, they shared memories of days that didn’t include me. And as they laughed and told their stories and laughed some more I thought of days in the future, I perhaps far in the future, that will not include me or them.
Time goes so fast I realized as I watched these retired adults see my mother with sixth grade eyes and call her by a name last spoken almost sixty years ago. Time goes so fast. How will I use mine before it is gone?
