time warp

There is this heavy, sweet, somnolent feeling that comes with playing in the water under a bright sun, like some kind of hypnotic trance.

When I was a kid, my extended family used to rent a cottage on the sound side of the Outer Banks of NC, and my cousin and I would spend all morning jumping off the dock into the inlet waters, lost in mad, splashing, hilarity. Cannonball! Corkscrew! Backwards! Sidewards! Mermaid style! Laughing and swimming back to the ladder, then running around for the next jump—Woo hoo! Exhilarating! Oh how we would complain when, in the afternoons, we were called in out of the water by the grown ups and made to go inside—the horror! I’m sure they were just afraid our skin would crisp, but at the time it felt like bitter injustice. But we would eat lunch and lay around in the hum of the air-conditioner while all the uncles and aunts and grandparents read, waiting for the cooler temperatures of evening, and it wasn’t so bad. That sleepy, relaxed feeling is pretty nice, actually.

So, yesterday, I got back from swimming, extracted the kids from their suits, rinsed everyone of pond silt, sent the kids off to play in the sandbox, and then snuck off to actually lie down for a minute. Don’t tell anyone. It was just for a minute, I swear, only a minute, because no doubt the kids would be into something that needed triage momentarily…. But that sleepy, heavy, relaxed feeling totally had hold of me, resistance is futile, so I curled up on my bed in the empty yurt, my hair still wet from swimming, the air-conditioner humming, and I closed my eyes.

It felt just like those afternoons on the Outer Banks, sprawled on the bed, wet hair on my neck, the air-conditioner’s drone, bright light pouring in around the edges of curtains drawn against the heat, my arms and legs heavy and relaxed….

And I must have fallen asleep for a second because then I was really there, I was ten years old, resting in the Roberson’s cottage, thinking about what I would do that evening, and what was for dinner, and the book I was reading, my whole life stretched out before me….

….and then I opened my eyes….

WHAMMO!

It was 25 freaking years later!

Holy cow!

I was in a yurt! I was married! I was the mother of two children!

I’m telling you, the palpable sense of stepping from ten years old and into the back-end of thirty-something was so convincing, so…WEIRD, that for a few seconds I still was 10 years old, transported into this adult life by time warp. I had lost my childhood, my twenties were gone, my early thirties, my youth, all gone, oops, I had walked through the wrong door somewhere, and into the freaking future. So many big decisions had already been made, who I would marry, having children, where I would live, career choices—I actually scrambled for a second in my head, no, no, wait, wait, I’m not ready—!

But then my ten year old self looked around, and I cringed, afraid she would be disappointed or something at where she had ended up…

…and she wasn’t. Relief! Through her eyes, it all looked kind of…cool. Surprising, yes. Some of it quite different from her plans. But, if this was the future, well, all right, she thought, that was okay with her. Good job, she said, fading.

Then I woke up all the way, a little stunned, hypnotic trance broken, like that end of a stupid movie where you go wtf? It was all a dream?????

Meeting one’s ten year old self for a few seconds has the potential to go so badly. Regrets and resentments, lost dreams, lost innocence, bad choices. And this hadn’t gone badly at all. Count my blessings, right?

I’m so glad I haven’t let her down!

I mean, you know. Yet.