Back in Time

Have you ever wished to go back in time? Maybe you want to hug someone you’ve lost or ask them something important. Maybe you would like to reassure your younger self or snuggle your little child who is now grown. At times like this, you might wish for time travel. 

I’ve traveled through time and space; it’s always been unexpected and it’s always been brief. But I’ve been there, in the past. 

Once it happened when I was walking in Austin, Texas with my son and his family. It was short-sleeved weather in spring. 

I pushed the stroller on a trail along Lady Bird Lake. It’s really part of a river, but you know Texans. They do their own thing. I saw my granddaughter’s chubby hands reach for a butterfly and I heard birds overhead. I felt fully present in Texas as a grandmother. 

Until I smelled honeysuckle. The moment my brain registered the smell, I was transported to a summer day in my childhood neighborhood.

I stand on my bike to pedal the last of the hill wearing a green-striped shirt and PF Flyers. A familiar smell. Without thinking, I stop at my neighbor’s honeysuckle bushes. I pick a blossom. pinch the bottom, pull the stamen, and dab the nectar on my tongue. 

The scent of honeysuckle is all it takes to drop me right back into childhood.

Music transports me too. One moment I’m driving carpool and the next I’m a 14-year-old girl riding shotgun in my friend’s Riviera listening to Journey’s Open Arms on repeat. 

Maybe each of our five senses has that power. Maybe our bodies carry a code that once activated, takes us back to the sights, sounds and feelings of another time.

But last month I was transported by something else. I was transported by my grandson.

I was at his birth 2 years ago. He arrived with dark hair, long fingers and chubby cheeks. His own person, uniquely him. 

But as he grew, he started to look more like his daddy, my first son. His hair turned blonde and he chunked up nicely. 

Once when my grandson was 18 months, I took him to Target for a diversion while his sister was at preschool. We spent an hour in the sports aisle. I’d hand him the ball he pointed to and he’d throw, kick, roll, dribble, pass or hug it to his chest. He loved balls as much as his daddy did at the same age. 

Last month my husband and I flew to Texas to celebrate our grandson’s 2nd birthday. His mama decorated with baseball cutouts and made a baseball cake. He went around saying, “Baseball my birthday” and puckering his lips to practice blowing out the candles.

The day after the party, I lifted my grandson into his highchair for lunch. I looked down the same moment he looked up. Our faces were a few inches apart.

Suddenly and without notice, I was transferred to another time and place. When I was a first-time mom with a blonde, chunky two-year-old boy in a high chair. 

The feelings wash over me and I’m back to all the firsts. Am I doing it right? Is he going to be okay? I have peanut butter smeared on my shirt, and my husband says, it is evidence of a hug.

I’m in the exhaustion and worry, the beauty and joy, the firsts and lasts, the sleep-interrupted nights. The promise of a whole life ahead. 

It only lasts a moment. Long enough for me to bend down and look into the face of a little boy. My next-generation boy. 

My past is my son’s present. I see the future in my past. That’s how life goes. 

And the way I see it, the future is bright.