Time Machine?

A few nights ago I was awake at four a.m., not unusual at all. I walked around the house a little, went to the bathroom and drank some water. Frequently I feel some spirit activity at this time which I cannot put my finger on. “The witching hour”, I have heard it called. Closer to the veil between worlds, I am most at home there.

On this particular early morning a storm was coming, a strong one. The first distant booms were loud though far away. It took a few moments for me to be sure that is what I really heard. I looked at my son, sleeping on a mattress on our bedroom floor to share in the air conditioning. His hair is quite long lately and I brushed it away from his face to see him and listen to his breath.

Sometimes when he sleeps I see Susanna in him. Please forgive me, those who come here to read my blog, for where I am going to take you. I see Susanna’s face attached to tubes keeping her alive on that horrible day, in a coma. I see her, while waiting for the brain scan which never happened, as I touched her hand and told her everything I needed her to hear. I look at my son’s sleeping angelic face and see hers, lifeless and about to leave. It reminds me of how close I still am to the shock of everything. I live and breathe and do, every day, but my heart and soul are closest to that day and I have a lot more time I need to spend there.

But the story I want to tell is that this time I looked at his face and saw something else instead. I saw that this fifty and one half inch, sixty-three pound person is in fact the baby I grew inside and brought home with me seven years ago. For that spot in time, time meant nothing. Amazing, forever, to know that a person grew inside of you and then separated to become someone. Someone you are forever bound to and likely have been many times before. We live on a stopover in eternity.

Time is nothing. It is August and the days stretch on, leaving space to ponder the sun and the earth and the beach. Time is all we have but it means nothing. I got back into bed and the rain started, pounding so pretty onto the window and air conditioner. I felt the power of the thunder and lightning and gave a moment of worship to it. I felt it, not just in idea or word but in reality. I gave a moment of my love to the spirit of this earth. I do not need to be outdoors to know it.

I was talking to my significant other and my precious son, a couple of days later, and I mentioned that I would like a time machine because I am feeling a little old. I used to say I would never call myself old in front of my children. I did not want them to go to school and say, “My Mom is old.” I do not care so much anymore. I am old enough to stick my head into the refrigerated meat bin at the supermarket to ease a hot flash (more about that in another post).

This is what my boy said: “You should go back to when it was just me, before Susanna. Then she could be born and you could tell the doctor to look for that thing. The aneurysm.” Exactly.

Here is something from my book in progress. I realized that the best way to describe the book is “A Non-Linear Diary”. Not exactly a memoir. It is written in passages. Every word is true.

During the first few days I was needing to know where Sunshine had gone. I was wishing someone like Jennifer Love Hewitt would stop me in the street and tell me they saw her, or looking for her in furry white jellyfish orbs on digital photos. I could not find anything in life acceptable to me. Papi and I were hurt and shocked beyond reach of each other. I took care of Brother, it was bedtime. I picked him up and twirled him and rocked him in a dance and made him smile. And for a few seconds I was okay because I saw his eyes and was transported to an earlier time. Dancing at bedtime. He is a couple of weeks old and we are in our studio apartment. I am bewildered and lost since he has been born (he cries a lot and I feel inadequate). I see him smile and crinkle up his eyes and he looks so much like me that I recognize him as my child who can be mothered by me. I remember this feeling in a fleeting moment, in a new time with him on earth and Sunshine somewhere else. There was a moment when I believed I might survive.