Thoughts on Time Travel

This morning after church my older daughter handed me a little box of raisins.

“Thanks. Where'd you get these?”

She's been in a rather verbose mood today—even more so than usual. So I waited while she explained that everyone got a box of raisins in junior church today—well, not everybody, because some of the kids didn't want them and so they said no thank you so the teachers didn't give them any. But everybody else got raisins. EXCEPT the teachers didn't give themselves any so everybody got raisins except the teachers and the kids who said no thank you. Except she didn't say no thank you even though she doesn't like raisins because she knew I liked raisins so she went ahead and took the raisins—and said thank you—she remembered to say thank you—because she knew I would like the raisins. No, she didn't say thank you because she knew I'd like the raisins. She accepted them because she knew I'd like the raisins. She just said thank you to be polite. So, here, Mommy, are some raisins.

So I said thank you and tucked away the raisins.

“Just don't eat the ones that I already chewed.”

What!?

“Well, I just wanted to try them, because you never know when your taste buds are going to grow, and I've been in a growth spurt, so my taste buds might have changed.”

A gentleman standing nearby was snickering.

“You....” I shook my head. She'd tried a couple, hadn't liked them, so she'd put them back in the box.

“Well, you could wait eight hours for the germs to die off the ones I chewed, then you could eat them. That way you won't be wasting them. Or......you could just throw them away.”

By this time the gentleman was almost doubled over laughing.

So I handed her the box and explained that some lines I just wouldn't cross, and asked her to please pick out the ones she'd chewed and eat them or dispose of them herself, which she did.

The gentleman, wiping tears, thanked us for the much needed laugh and then he was out the door.

The whole dialog is fairly typical of what goes on between this child and me. Chances are it would pass into the mass of moments you forget—but for the guy who needed a good laugh. He'll remember this one.

* * *

When I was in Bible college one of my most memorable experiences was writing a paper for some theology class on Time and Eternity. I was arguing that if you carefully defined eternity you could reconcile man's free will with God's predestination. If you ever want to hear how I got there send me a private message and I'd be glad to bore you with the details. But in the course of writing this paper I knew I needed a substantive way to wrestle with the concepts swirling around in my mind. So I talked a friend into dialogging with me. We'd come home from school, I'd run up to her apartment (we both had apartments in an old, seedy hotel), maybe she'd come down to mine, and we'd talk for hours about time, how it works, what eternity is, how it works, what it would be like to live without time, all the stuff that makes a good time-warp in a Star Trek episode.

One idea that never found a place in the paper has stuck with me all these years. I think time runs backwards.

* * *

We move forward in the time line, passing from event to event, past, present, then future. We don't think about it, of course. Today slips into tonight, we sleep, wake up to a tomorrow that's now the new today, remembering the past, anticipating the future, but generally just living in time the way we live in air. We don't think about it. It's just there and it's just necessary.

As a kid—a young teen—one big highlight of the year was the regional fair in Knoxville, Tennessee. All my friends looked forward to it. We saved our money and were given tickets for the rides. These were not just typical carnival rides, either. These were the real thing, rides like the big amusement parks have. They had this roller coaster—I think it was called the Galaxy. That thing was awesome—till I rode the Wabash Cannonball in Nashville. But at the time the Galaxy was the biggest thing I'd ever been on, and between that and the loud music and the junk food and running around with your friends, it was definitely an event that was tough to wait for. It would get closer and closer, then it would be almost upon us, then we'd be on the road, then we were caught up in the experience, riding the rides, eating the food—riding more rides and feeling a little sick, eating to feel better then riding more rides—and then it was over.

* * *

So we move forward in the time line, but what about the events? They get their start in the future. We're separated from them by months, a seeming eternity. Then they're close—so close you think you can't bear it—then they're here. We reach out and grasp them, pull them into our past, and then they're behind us—forever a memory. Like two teams passing, shaking hands after a well-fought game, we reach out and grasp a seemingly endless line of events, acknowledging them before we reach out to grasp the next one. Moving always forward as the events we reach for move in the opposite direction—backward.

Less than a month ago my husband, a runner, elected to go to a heart specialist to see if they could do something about these palpitations he sometimes gets when he's out running. They ran him through all these tests, put a 24 hour monitor on him, and then the doctor called and asked him to come in for an office visit so he could show him the results.

Well, that was irritating. This specialist is a two hour drive away, and couldn't he just explain things over the phone? Nonetheless he went in to “discuss” things with the physician.

That day I got a call at school from Roger. He seemed shaken. Said we needed to make arrangements for the kids for a couple of days, because I'd be driving him to the hospital in the morning—to get a pacemaker put in. It all happened fast. The next day I found myself sitting in a cardiac surgery waiting room while Roger had a one-hour simple procedure done. Only as the time slipped by, and the second hour was almost over, I suddenly looked around me and grasped the moment. Here I was alone in this waiting room, no idea why things were taking so long, and why hadn't I thought to bring a friend?

I got up and walked around a bit, found a computer station with internet access, and tried logging on and updating friends. The browser was ancient, but it managed to bring up a favorite message board and I typed an update in the prayer forum. I went and sat down, feeling a bit less alone.

You know, I hadn't seen this one coming. With all the things I look forward to—and the things I dread—sitting in the waiting room while my forty-something-ish husband had a pacemaker put in was not on the list of upcoming events. Yet there he was, groggily enduring, numb but aware that a surgeon who was used to older, softer bodies was even now struggling to push a pacemaker behind his well-built chest muscle.

Things have settled into a new normal now. He's always been so approachable that people are just physical with him. Pounding him on the shoulder, throwing playful punches—he's pretty relaxed and fun to be around. But now he has to be on his guard. There's a spot under his shoulder blade that can't be punched, playfully or not. There's a device there; a device that means he can't fix the car anymore, or use cordless power tools. No more arc welding—well, that, at least, was never an issue. He can't go through electronic security checks at the airport. He'll have to endure hand searches. You know those automatic doors at stores? He has to walk quickly through them. Always aware. Always on guard.

But even with all that, it's better than not having the pacemaker. You see, his tests showed that his heart was stopping at night. Sometimes for as long as ten seconds. Just for fun, stop right now and watch a clock as ten seconds go by. Chilling, huh?

So in God's grace, the problem was found and corrected. So even though we had this unexpected thing come at us—and even though it was not an easy thing—God's grace has seen to it that a worse unexpected event never grasped me by the hand and pulled me into the future. Chances are better now that the kids will grow up with a father, that I'll wake up each morning and my husband will still be there.

So I see time as a two-way road. We travel time in one direction while our events come at us from the other direction. We can reach out and grasp them as they go by or we can take them for granted. I'm a grasper. That's why I like to take pictures and record my music. The moment will always, in a sense, be with me.

We can choose, of course, to ignore the event that's here now while looking ahead to some future thing we don't really have yet. Or we can mull over some past thing that has no right to ruin our present, but could if we let it.

I choose to reach out and grasp the moment. Speaking of which, there's a beautiful fall day outside, I have a camera, and I've been sitting at this keyboard a bit too long...........