Back in Time

I could hardly process all the thoughts that came crowding to my mind. The day stretched longer than expected, but finally I was settled in the back seat of this little car. We sped along at dusk, on an oft-traveled and once familiar road, to the small town where I was born. Here was once the happy home I couldn’t wait to see each winter holiday, through my boarding school years. Here once lived my beloved parents and precious siblings, who together constituted my earliest and most carefree world. Here we have celebrated joyful weddings, rejoiced in new arrivals and grieved heartbreaking loss – experiencing together the defining moments and emotional milestones that mark all human life.

Familiar landmarks flew by in the summer darkness as the little car ate up each oncoming mile and its engine continued a noisy drone. I steadied my emotions and ordered my thoughts in these three hours, as I journeyed to the past and picked through all the memories. I found myself smiling a few times and, in other instances, my eyes filled up and brimmed over silently in the concealing darkness.

But then, we turned into a gate, I rang a doorbell and a door opened to spill a wash of welcoming light. It was time to leave the past and come out of the dark into the welcoming lit-up present. It was time to let go of my sentimental nostalgia for what used to be. It was time to enter this joyful present and look forward to a hopeful future…

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