is simply a part of the larger web that is the time continuum.”
And that’s precisely how I felt on that day in 1920. Though on a much smaller level than my father had articulated in his experience. Still, the feeling was there. I stared numbly at the headline in the newspaper. Sam had wandered off to a different part of the house. My tea was getting cold, and I found myself feeling chilled too. It was a hollow feeling, like someone had carved out a part of me in the night and taken it away with them. I shivered. It was so strange that something so wonderful should be met with such mixed emotions. My mind kept drifting back to my years as an oblivious young girl in 1997. What it would have been like. What I could have done, should I have lived then and had that power. How I would have felt about these women, about me, sitting in the past on the day the amendment came to be in 1920; or if I would even give them a second thought, taking my new-found power for granted.
But that was not to be known. What was done was done. And, as far as I knew, it could never be undone.
For the next few days, I felt the inner struggle within me against the fog. Sam noticed that I seemed withdrawn, or distant. I didn’t mean to be. Honestly, I was thinking about my family, and about my other existence. With the war, and with Susan as a young girl, I hadn’t given them much thought in a very long time. But the appearance of the time travel paradox had brought them back to me, hazing the line between the two dimensions, and spurring my imagination about what could have been, or what may have happened.
On our walks to the park, I told Susan about Becky. I told her how she was my best friend growing up, before I lost my family and was taken in by the Sullivans. I had been thinking about Becky a lot, never being able to replace her, and never truly finding another close woman friend. The girls in the reading group had always been lovely, and I enjoyed their company during tea time and the support they provided throughout life’s tumultuous events. But it was never really the same.
I imagined that Becky had married Dan. Their high school love had bloomed into a college affair. Although he had been reckless, he was really good to her. I imagined, and I hoped, that she had continued on without me. That she had gone off to college and studied something fantastic—she had always been interested in medicine. I hoped that she was a leading surgeon at an acclaimed hospital, saving lives and leading a fabulous and love-filled life in the time she had off. I still feared that Becky never understood why I disappeared, but the pit in my heart told me that my mother would have consoled her, and shared the implausible truth. Becky was my best friend in the entire world. In all worlds, or at least the two rivulets of time I had visited as of yet. She had to have known that I wouldn’t have simply abandoned her and my life that I loved so much.
I also thought regularly about my old family once again. Or my real family, I suppose. Although my father couldn’t control his excursions, I couldn’t believe that he didn’t ever try to come back for me. He had told me that there were certain places he had materialized in repeatedly, and I could only hope that the woods behind the kind family’s home where Officer Sullivan found me was one of them. But at the same time, the heartbreak would have been too much. After the Sullivans had taken me in, my father could have scoured those forests and that home for years, searching and wondering what happened to his daughter, never knowing that she was only a few miles away in the nearest town.
Or perhaps he had asked the family. Maybe they told him that I had been taken to the Sullivans. This alternate reality hurt more than the latter, in a way. Wondering why my father had not come to find me there, in the Sullivans’ home, claiming me as his daughter and whisking me back to our little home in
And that’s precisely how I felt on that day in 1920. Though on a much smaller level than my father had articulated in his experience. Still, the feeling was there. I stared numbly at the headline in the newspaper. Sam had wandered off to a different part of the house. My tea was getting cold, and I found myself feeling chilled too. It was a hollow feeling, like someone had carved out a part of me in the night and taken it away with them. I shivered. It was so strange that something so wonderful should be met with such mixed emotions. My mind kept drifting back to my years as an oblivious young girl in 1997. What it would have been like. What I could have done, should I have lived then and had that power. How I would have felt about these women, about me, sitting in the past on the day the amendment came to be in 1920; or if I would even give them a second thought, taking my new-found power for granted.
But that was not to be known. What was done was done. And, as far as I knew, it could never be undone.
For the next few days, I felt the inner struggle within me against the fog. Sam noticed that I seemed withdrawn, or distant. I didn’t mean to be. Honestly, I was thinking about my family, and about my other existence. With the war, and with Susan as a young girl, I hadn’t given them much thought in a very long time. But the appearance of the time travel paradox had brought them back to me, hazing the line between the two dimensions, and spurring my imagination about what could have been, or what may have happened.
On our walks to the park, I told Susan about Becky. I told her how she was my best friend growing up, before I lost my family and was taken in by the Sullivans. I had been thinking about Becky a lot, never being able to replace her, and never truly finding another close woman friend. The girls in the reading group had always been lovely, and I enjoyed their company during tea time and the support they provided throughout life’s tumultuous events. But it was never really the same.
I imagined that Becky had married Dan. Their high school love had bloomed into a college affair. Although he had been reckless, he was really good to her. I imagined, and I hoped, that she had continued on without me. That she had gone off to college and studied something fantastic—she had always been interested in medicine. I hoped that she was a leading surgeon at an acclaimed hospital, saving lives and leading a fabulous and love-filled life in the time she had off. I still feared that Becky never understood why I disappeared, but the pit in my heart told me that my mother would have consoled her, and shared the implausible truth. Becky was my best friend in the entire world. In all worlds, or at least the two rivulets of time I had visited as of yet. She had to have known that I wouldn’t have simply abandoned her and my life that I loved so much.
I also thought regularly about my old family once again. Or my real family, I suppose. Although my father couldn’t control his excursions, I couldn’t believe that he didn’t ever try to come back for me. He had told me that there were certain places he had materialized in repeatedly, and I could only hope that the woods behind the kind family’s home where Officer Sullivan found me was one of them. But at the same time, the heartbreak would have been too much. After the Sullivans had taken me in, my father could have scoured those forests and that home for years, searching and wondering what happened to his daughter, never knowing that she was only a few miles away in the nearest town.
Or perhaps he had asked the family. Maybe they told him that I had been taken to the Sullivans. This alternate reality hurt more than the latter, in a way. Wondering why my father had not come to find me there, in the Sullivans’ home, claiming me as his daughter and whisking me back to our little home in
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