Time Walking Report: Christmas Booty

It's Christmas day, 2011. I'm so happy because not only did my kids believe me at 2 AM when I told them Santa hadn't come yet, but they went back to sleep until 7 and then we had "the best Christmas EVERRRR!" And now we're all dressed up fancy and I get to play the piano for the choir. We choose a pew close to the front so between songs I can sit with my family and feel warm and fuzzy.

You know, it's all Santa's fault, really. And I'm not just picking on him because I think he gets way too much credit for the gift giving. I don't have any elves and I manage. But if he hadn't put those little organza bags full of treats in the kids' stockings, everything would have been fine.

I stand, I walk to the piano for the next number, pleased with this happiest of Christmases. Behind me my family gasps and points at the organza bag clinging to my butt like a little white bow of Christmas cheer. Do they stop me? No. Three generations are rolling in the aisle, attracting the attention of ten surrounding pews who watch me mosey to the front of the chapel with a gift wrapped heiney.

So, my plan is to time walk back to December 25th and delicately pluck the decoration from my booty before anyone notices. But . . . here I am, and there I go, and my family looks so happy, faces burning red with the best kind of don't-laugh-in-church giggling, and the guy behind them leans forward and tells my husband, "Now that's a heck of a gift". And now my mom's wiping her eyes. Aww. Look at that.

Oh, fine. Merry Christmas, congregation. From the heart of my bottom.

Time Walking Report: Free At Last

My mom grew up in California in the 60s (sorry to date you, mamasita) and she's always called it turbulent. Things were changing, people changing. And they still are. There may be discrimination in our country still, but I like to believe that Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream has traveled through time to change the way most Americans see each other.
I only takes 17 minutes to time walk back to August 28, 1963 to be reminded of where we were, and hopefully, where we're going.
Think I'll read Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird again, too. It helped a kid who grew up in a small town without a lot of diversity see a little bit farther.

Time Walking Report: The Speed of Light

If you're having trouble time walking, this might help. It clears up some of those tricky concepts like the speed of light, Doppler shift and why we love British accents so much.

Time Walking Report: Relativity

Thinking. It usually happens when I’m trying to sleep, or when I’m in the shower and don’t have anywhere to write down my ideas. I started using a dry erase marker on the shower wall for a while, but soon discovered that dry erase markers are meant to stay dry in order to erase.

This particular thinking session I was in the bathtub, shaving my legs and pondering relativity. You know, the gravity and space and time stuff. That maybe the earth’s gravitational pull would prevent me from time walking into space. Not true. The first time my husband kissed me, it shot me past the moon. I didn’t come back for three weeks, and when I did, I found out I was in love. Permanently. No erasing.
There are a few theories out there that the brilliant, highly educated physicists may have wrong. For example, some think time travel to the future would be easier than time travel to the past. I’m not so sure about that, so I tested it out. Isaac Asimov’s sci-fi novel Foundation took me so far into the future, the planet earth is practically myth. Funny though, the people 10,000 years from now had a lot of the same problems we do. Only more of them because there were a quadrillion people living all over the galaxy. So I don’t think time travelling to the future was easier at all. In fact, it’s hard to see the future and find out we still make the same mistakes.

Here and now, though, we can try to do better. So I time walked to Pakistan and gave a group of women a loan so they could start a rope-making business. I wanted to go borrow money from Future Me who is a successful writer, but I couldn't find the path. It will be there someday, but for now, I decided to give what Today Me could. Twenty five dollars to Kiva.org isn’t much in my world. But in the world these women live in, it's a lot.

Relativity. Maybe I just changed the future. I told you I could time walk. I bet you can, too.

Time Walking Report

Time walked today. That's right. Straight back to 1936, then to 1918. I bounced back and forth between the two, a mystery unfolding chapter by chapter. I met a little girl named Abilene who introduced me to a diviner, a saloon owner/pastor, a high school track star off to fight in the war. And maybe even a ghost. I don't know yet because I haven't finished the story. But I will, and you might want to read it, too. Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool, winner of the Newbery Medal.

I'll be taking a break from 1936/1918 in order to time walk to the year 2001 this weekend. I'm going to sit in my high school cafeteria and eat gooey cinnamon rolls with some of my old classmates, just like we used to. I should probably time walk back to February 2011 and start planning then. Who knew how hard it would be to track everyone down? Their paths are well hidden.

We'll listen to some Green Day and deny ever listening to the Spice Girls, and we'll think about the ones who aren't with us any more.

Here's what I'll tell myself if I run into the 2001 me: Don't be in such a hurry, and don't wait so long. Find the right speed, just enough to feel a rush, but not so fast you can't see what you're passing.