BETWIXT AND BETWEEN ERAS

Even though it has been nearly four days since I flew home from Illinois to Georgia, I find myself still enthralled with the enchantment of spending time with people so dear to me in places so familiar and beloved to me. The echoes of exquisite memories of childhood triggered by the time spent in our home town are now over-laid and interwoven with new images of the loving looks in the eyes of friends I have known since I was eight years old; since I was twelve years old; since I was thirteen to seventeen years old and beyond. Rituals such as the Homecoming Parade; a tour of our high school; a walk in our lakeside village from bridge to island; to bridge to a second island; to bridge back to the parking lot near the park deliver the framework for reminiscences and accentuate the joy of walking again where my feet, eyes and heart need no prompting.

Finding my younger self in memory, and then losing my contemporary self from time to time, giving my mind and heart over to the consciousness that allows me to be eight again walking to the beach with my brother and sister on a summer afternoon; to be eleven again riding on our 4-H float in our town's Bicentenniel Parade with our beloved Lady Bird, the springer spaniel kind enough to humor me into believing I had trained her to perform obedience tasks; to be fifteen again getting ready for the Dame's Dance in the spring of our Junior year in high school; to be eighteen again, coming home from Freshman year at the University of Illinois . . . all those musings and time-machine-like-hopping yield precedence to the necessity of regaining a grip on the present; to work with stalwart precious friends on tasks that are necessary to prepare for each reunion event.

For some time now I have been feeling that I am on the threshold of a distinct new era in my life, one that I can't quite conceive of as yet. That concept of walking by faith, not by sight has transitioned from the abstract into a very real moment by moment manifestation. Slipping in and out of dissociation, time has been capricious and contradictory. What seems at times to be linear and unremarkable turns out to be elusively cyclical; no . . . disjointed and un-connected . . . fantastically surprising.

Passing by our old house, I see the building as it is now, but overlaid on the way it looked the first time we saw it; after the siding had been put on it; after the garage was built in front of it and to the west; as it looked the first time I saw it again after eight years as a young adult; and then back to the way it looks today, but remembering that early fall morphs into late fall with trees and bushes now naked of leaves; the almost constant motion of the water of the lake with its play of light . . . sun sparkling on gentle waves in evening transforming into delicately surface with thin shiny unreliable clean mirror-like ice; giving way as the winter draws onto thick ice;snow-covered ice; ice surfaces shoveled into hockey rinks; into figure skating rinks; into follow-the leader pathways.

Then the remembrances of the times of late winter, yearning for the solid motionless coldness to disappear so that the water would become alive again; reflecting the sky; devouring the ice floes as they came to be -- sun, rain, whipped up small waves, gentle evening stillness reflecting the roses; the oranges; the fuschias; the scarlets of the skies from sunset through dusk and into darkness.

Then the joys of spring in fits and starts; blossoms and flowering bulbs in a push-me/pull you tug of war with snow storms and ices storms until the heat of the sun and the torrents of rain or gentle showers conspire to renovate and rehabilitate the earth; the lawns; the streets; the paths that had all been inundated by the inches and feet of the white stuff -- recognizing the reality of the shapes of row boats, sail boats, paddle boats, canoes rising gradually out of their shrouds and recovering their true colors; warming up; drying out . . . waiting for children to bring oars, put on life vests, turn them over, launch them and be propelled out onto the living lakes.

Then, oh! The summer beginning gradually fully dressed; emerging from the delicate greens of mid-spring followed by the forceful conquering dark oak leaves; elm leaves; sycamore leaves; lilac bush leaves; willow sprays; shoots of tiger lilies; blooms in their time, looking back and remembering the first purple and white crocuses poking their heads out of the tired old remnants of smooth shiny white blankets of snow -- a steady white layer decorated with a kind of variable crumbling crystal covering . . . then daffodils while cherry tree blossoms make their appearance . . . then hyacinths . . . then tulips -- and do you remember the azaleas, the snowball bushes, the pear tree blossoms? The lilac hedges twenty to twenty-five feet high . . . then gladioli and irises and the rich, thick dark green carpets of northern tier lawns.

But also the parks, the woods, the forest preserves; the joy of picnics and hikes, bike riding and horseback riding . . . all with parents and family, or with friends, or even alone sometimes. . . remembering the thrills of launching down steep hills on bikes -- races, and hide and seek games, or just riding together by twos, by threes, by fives, by sevens, even. . . calling out challenges; trying to speak when the sounds of words have been left far behind; caught or not caught -- repeated or not repeated.

So even though I flew home to Georgia, sections of my heart, my mind, my soul, my spirit, my psyche, my intellect, my memory, my hope and my dreams are still held captive miles away, years away, eons away, furlongs away.

It's a good thing this kind of super-conscious and/or semi-conscious time travel in my mind still allows me to realize that I am home in the here and now.

But it still may take a few days to let go of the way it is possible to haunt the glorified past. I'll let you know.

Thanks, beloved, for "listening" . . .