I struggled a lot with the topic this week, trying hard to make it unconventional, but yet something you all might want to read. I thought about writing on my favorite Cher songs (but there are really only two, and that wouldn’t be a blog, it would be a list because I don’t have much to say about them, they’re alright, not terrific and not worth shelling out $150 to sit in the back row of the upper deck at Caesar’s in Las Vegas to hear). I also gave some thought to boring you all with a little astrophysics rant from my early days, but the thing about physics is that it’s sort of a hard topic to put to paper without lots of mathematical symbols, equations, and back story. Plus I haven’t yet come up with the exact formula for time travel, so we’ll save that for next week. What a great idea, next time it’s my turn, the topic is MATH. Woohoo!
Anyway (GM’s most favorite segue), I’ve decided to stick to the basics and just talk about Time Travel. Straight up. No fluff, no trying to make this into some quirky, weird, highly intelligent, but slightly off-topic blog. Nope. Not this week.
As far as being able to travel backward and forward in time, I’m all for it, but leave my life out of it. I don’t often have major regrets over things I’ve done and wish I could go back and re-do them. Most of my regrets come in the form of something that’s just popped out of my mouth at the most inappropriate time or something inappropriate that’s popped out at just the right time, but is still wrong. I would go back in time to take that back since making the mistake doesn’t seem to be helping me keep my trap shut. But those are too numerous to try to list here. I also have no interest in seeing the future. Sorry – it’s not for me. Don’t want to know when I’ll die, don’t want to see how my life turns out. No thanks – if I wanted boring I’d……..well go to a Cher concert.
What I would use my GirlMonday super time travel powers for is to go back and be a fly on the wall for events of the past. But only things that are personal to me – I don’t want to get greedy with the power and lose it. So I’ll pass on the I Have a Dream Speech, or the birth of Jesus (oooooh, how nice would that be though?). I’d rather get a chance to witness my dad asking my mom out on their first date. For those of you who don’t know my parents (who have been divorced since I was 10), MommaMonday is a very type-A personality and my dad is the most amiable guy you’ll ever meet. But apparently at some point he got up the nerve to ask her out, and their first date was to a UT-Penn State football game. He was supposed to be in a Saturday class but skipped it so he could take her out and on the way to the game my grandfather (who didn’t know a thing about this – I’m almost guessing this was dad’s first date ever) passed them on the interstate. As the story goes mom was saddled up next to dad in the seat of his old Buick and he had his arm around her when he looked over and saw my grandpa just waving and grinning in the car next to them. What I wouldn’t give to have been there.
My stepfather moved out of the house he shared with MommaMonday sometime right after I left DC and moved South (always capitalized, sorry). She said he kind of went crazy right before he left, and then it got even worse afterward as they were finalizing their divorce and hashing out the finances. I have my own theories, and I’ll keep them to myself, but he was never anything but wonderful when I was around. He and my mom married when I was 11 (see timeframe in previous paragraph….uh yeah), and I was supposed to just love him right from the start. Okay, sure. I’m 11 and my parents just divorced. That’s exactly what I was going to do. But over time, he sorta grew on me. He was a lot like my dad (I guess that’s why this one didn’t last either) which meant he was an all-around nice guy. Always doing things for other people, which meant being genuinely nice to me. Plus he had interests that matched with mine that I didn’t share with either parent. He was a baseball fanatic – which meant I had someone to talk OBP, CS, and HBP with. Well when he moved out, after I moved away, we lost touch. I tried to email a couple of times, but to be honest, I didn’t try very hard. Mom was pretty upset and angry, and he seemed to be barely holding on. So I tried not to get involved. Divorce is amazing in that once one of your parents marries someone you’re supposed to immediately love them, but once they divorce, you have to turn those feelings right around and push that person out of your life. So that’s what I did – it made her happy, it was easy, and he seemed to be dealing with his own problems from the divorce. But if I could travel through the space/time continuum, I’d be there as his life was spiraling out of control, I’d be there as he alienated all of his kids, and everyone he ever knew. And I’d certainly be there that Valentine’s day he drank himself to death in a hotel room in Florida. I don’t know that I could have done anything. I don’t know that it would do anything but ease my guilt, but I could try, right?
And lastly, for my short little life so far, I would absolutely love the opportunity to be there when my baby was born. GirlFairway didn’t come to me until she was almost four months old. She has such a distinct personality; I am in constant wonderment of where it comes from. Who does the curly tail come from? The black tongue? The incredibly slow gait? The adoration for all flying insects? Was it Momma or Papa Fairway who hated water? Metal sounds? Didn’t bark? Or were they perfectly normal and she comes from some traumatic experience in those first 3+ months. If that’s the case, I would want to be there too. Not as a fly on the wall – I don’t think I could contain myself. There’s got to be a reason why her little body is racked with anxiety every day. A reason why she freaks out when we get in the car and throws up from stress. Some explanation why she has doggie nightmares that cause her to make the most painful noises. There’s a reason why if I raise my voice, for any reason, even to be heard over the washer, she pins her ears back, tucks that long, fluffy, curly tail, and slinks away from me. And if I could just be there at the moment that happened, I could do something to stop it.
If only.
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