[Continued from "A Story of Time: Part One" on this very website.]

5. Time Present

"…that way."

Refocusing on Aunt Wise's hand, which remained suspended above her wrist, Jeanette heard the two words penetrate her ears, feeling as if she had just tuned into an in-progress movie.  The aroma of brewing coffee once again descended on her like invisible rain.  The swish of the milk foaming machine instantly became audible.  The words, "And there's your cappuccino," flowed from the college student behind the counter like a bridge between her ears and present-time reality.  Aunt Wise still sat across from her.

Blinking, Jeanette exclaimed, "This is a gip!  This is a crock!" as she twisted the flesh-toned watch on her wrist, ready to yank it off.  "I knew it sounded too good to be true.  It doesn't work!  I knew it, I knew it!  Why didn't I listen to my gut feeling and just walk away from all this crap?  It's total science fiction."

Pursing her lips and unable to reflect the young woman who sat across from her in her eyes, she began, "Now, dear, I want you to calm down."

"Calm down?  You told me this thing would work—and I believed you.  Well, it didn't!"

"How didn't it work?"

"You told me I could go back in time—start my day over again.  I even set this fraudulent watch to ‘9:00 a.m.' to do it all over again, but without the problems of the first time.  You said I could redo everything, but change the outcome because I'd go back and use the lessons I'd already learned."

"No," Aunt Wise disagreed, shaking her head.  "You said that!"

"What?  Now you're gonna change your story?"

"I'm not changing anything.  I agreed with you when you asked if you could move the hands of time back and do it all over again.  But I didn't agree that you would take the lessons you had learned the first time with you and change the outcome."

"Oh, come on!  Then why didn't you tell me that?"

Mustering empathy, she explained, "I tried.  I tried to tell you that your vision of doing it differently wouldn't—couldn't—come true.  But you so hastily dialed in the numbers that you had already left the present and moved back to 9:00 this morning before I could get the words out."  Scanning the faces in the coffee shop, she finally said, "You did move back to 9:00 this morning, didn't you—the time, I presume, that you ordinarily start your day?"

Nodding, Jeanette confirmed the occurrence.  "Yes, I went back alright.  But everything was the same—exactly the same.  I thought I could avoid all the unpleasant parts—the infractions, the conflicts, the upsets, the errors, the pain.  I even tried.  But I was powerless to change an iota.  I arrived with the same splitting headache I had the first time.  I couldn't even tolerate the receptionist saying ‘Good morning'—and she's so nice.  I resented my coworker's very presence and first tried to ignore her."  She wiped some new tears, before continuing.  "When I saw the report on my desk after the morning coffee break, I saw red.  I exploded!  And I accused.  Oh, boy, did I accuse.  And I don't even know why my supervisor agreed with me, but she did.  I got my coworker in trouble for something she didn't even do.  It was an honest mistake on her part."

"There, there," Aunt Wise assured her.

"And when I came down the elevator to come here for my lunch break, I realized how wrong I was—how my low tolerance changed my behavior, how I targeted my coworker out of jealousy because of her ability to attract and stay with a man, how I took it out on her and used the report with her initials on it as justification for it, how my supervisor—maybe because of her own bad mood—fed off of my anger and sided with me—like the first time.  It was all exactly like the first time.  Or was it the second time?  Or are the two exactly the same?"  Burying her face in her hand, she murmured, "I'm so confused about this time thing.  I just don't know anymore."

"Now, now," assured Aunt Wise.  "The last thing I want is for you to be hard on yourself, since you've done enough beating up on yourself already.  You had a bad night, with underlying problems probably subconsciously eating away at you.  You had a very bad morning.  And you're one of the very few on the planet who's actually transcended time.  But you've learned an awful lot, I see."

Staring through the figures which continually passed the coffee shop on the sidewalk, she ultimately turned back to Aunt Wise.  "Yes, you're right.  I've been through a lot.  And I've learned a lot.  I…"

"Yes, you what?" the elderly woman pressed.

"I still don't understand that, with the lessons I learned the first time, why I couldn't go back and just apply them, making things right this time—better."

"Well, you will," she assured.  "You'll do exactly that: You'll take the lessons you learned, apply them, and change things—and-and grow into a better person.  But you'll do that as time moves ahead, not as it moves back."

Shaking her head in confusion, Jeanette squinted and said, "I-I still don't understand."

"You're not alone.  But you're fortunate in that you've just started on the path to doing just that—understanding."  She paused, then continued, "Time, in a way, is a gift—to be used.  It's nothing in and of itself—unless it's used for something.  If you gain additional time, as you just had—or, more precisely, as you led yourself to believe you had—you lose the knowledge, wisdom, and insight you gained with its first usage."

Jeanette looked at her incomprehensibly.

"Look," Aunt Wise attempted to further explain, "you can't ‘go back' with the knowledge that allowed you to ‘move ahead.'  If you set the clock back, you set everything else back with it.  It's almost like a theory of relativity: Gain one and lose the other—gain experience and lose the time it took to get it.  If you try to regain the time, then you lose the knowledge or experience or wisdom or even the fun you had gained with it in the first place.  You can't affect one without the other."

Measuring her words, Jeanette audibly reasoned, "So time is what you have to show for it—what you did with it—what you used it for?"

"Exactly!" exclaimed the elderly lady.  "Once you've gotten what you want or need from it, it's been used to support or bring those things about, and you can never get it back.  Returning to it is just replaying what's already recorded—like playing a recorded movie on a cassette and expecting something different when you look at it each time.  It's like waking up after a good, eight-hour sleep only to fall asleep again for another eight hours.  It's not the hours themselves, but the value or benefit you got from them in the first place."

"Then the hours without the good night's sleep coupled with them would be worthless."

"Absolutely!"

Pointing to the glass-covered clock hung on the wall behind the counter, Jeanette pressed, "But what about that?  That's time—the hours and minutes."

Shaking her head, Aunt Wise disagreed.  "No, it's not time: Hours and minutes are only measurements of its passage.  But they're not time itself."

"But-but what about the days and the nights—not to mention the seasons—like a hot summer day on the beach or the first winter snowfall?"

Shaking her head again, Aunt Wise corrected, "No, those are only measurements or marks of the earth's rotations.  But they're not time itself."

Still perplexed, she asked, "Then what is time?"

Running her tongue around her dry lips, Aunt Wise continued, "Well, I've just hinted at it and you've experienced it—in fact, all your life.  But you still need more exposure to it before you can fully understand it.  People often have to learn what it isn't before they can know what it is."

Playing ping-pong between the watch on her wrist and the wall clock with her eyes, Jeanette finally said, "So, you don't think I wasted my time this morning, especially since I went back all for nothing—I mean, I didn't change or learn a thing."

Raising her eyebrows, the elderly woman corrected, "Oh, I totally disagree, my dear.  I think you learned at lot the first time, as you said before, about your mood and behavior and treatment of your coworkers."

"Yes," Jeanette nodded, "but nothing the second time."

"Again, I disagree.  The second time you learned that you couldn't change the first time.  And who would want to after all you got out of it?"

"Well, I would've."

"Then you will.  The third or fourth or fifth times."

Shaking her head in confusion, she asked, "Then I really don't understand.  What's the third or fourth or fifth times?"

"The times you apply the lessons you learned."

"And when are those?"

"Any time that follows the second."

"But I thought you just said that I couldn't change anything by going back?"

"I did indeed.  I didn't say anything about going back.  What's written is written.  But the third or fourth or fifth times can only follow the second.  They can only occur later—that is, in the future."

"Or time ahead?" Jeanette asked with renewed enthusiasm, as she fingered her wrist-encircled time device.

"Yes, exactly—time ahead."  Closing her pocketbook, the woman continued.  "And what will you do with time ahead?  I mean, if it were a year or a decade later, what do you imagine for yourself?  Do you imagine being very different or further ahead, so to speak?"

Looking down at the table in a virtual state of reverie, Jeanette slowly responded.  "I don't know.  I don't know."

"Well, don't you have goals?  Don't you envision yourself as having done things so that you can look back and be happy or proud of what you've achieved?"

"I never really gave it much thought.  I had a few things—goals—like that earlier in life, but then came my job and-and I just kept putting them off until tomorrow or next year."

"You mean ‘someday?'" the elderly woman deciphered.

Nodding, Jeanette answered, "Yes."

"Do you know how many people do just that—live with the so-called ‘someday syndrome'—always intending to do whatever it is they want to do ‘someday' until they run out of ‘somedays?'"

Glancing at the faces in the coffee shop, which represented a wide range of ages, she did not respond.

"Time, you see," the woman explained, "is like a gift.  The second you fail to use it for something, it's gone forever and you can never get it back.  It's not like the money you can put in a bank account and then withdraw at a later date with interest.  The opposite is actually true: Money will grow and yield interest; time will shrink and contract, yielding less and less until it runs out.  Even the few minutes we've been speaking are already gone.  You can remember them, but you can never get them back and reuse them for something new or different.  I think you learned that this morning."

Again nodding, Jeanette quietly uttered, "I did."

"Then, go ahead.  Start using your gift—or at least making plans to use it for the very near future."  She paused, then continued, "Now you just said that you had some plans or goals that you wanted to do ‘someday.'  What were they?"

Contemplating, as she internally attempted to wade her way through the obstructions between her and the dusty shelves labeled "Goals" at the back of her mind, she ultimately said, "Well…I know it's crazy, but…"

"There's nothing crazy about doing what you want to do with your life.  In fact, not doing it is the crazy thing."

"Well," she slowly began, "I-I had always wanted to learn the German language—I mean, I had read about the fairytale castles in books when I had been a little girl and—I don't know—I thought it would be somehow romantic to learn the language and then make a trip to Germany—to cruise the Rhine and finally experience all those scenes and pictures I had read about."

"Well," exclaimed Aunt Wise, "I don't see anything wrong with that at all!  In fact, it sounds enchanting—and-and I don't mind confessing that I had always had a  vision like that myself when I had been a little girl."

Locking eyes with her, as if she had just discovered a kindred spirit, she asked with renewed enthusiasm, "Do you think—I mean, is all this possible?"

"I don't see why not—if you put your mind to it—if you take the right steps…"

"When do you think this could all happen?"

"Well, I don't know, my dear.  When do you think it could happen?  I mean, think of the steps you'd need to take and how long you would need to complete each one."

Deep in thought, Jeanette ultimately responded, "Well, I guess I could either take an evening course or the audiocassette kind and learn the language.  To be really fluent in it, I guess I would need a couple of years—at least.  Then I would have to save up for the trip by eliminating what I don't consider an absolute necessity.  I have a few things in mind already.  Then I'd have to plan the trip itself—hotel and itinerary and such."

"Well," Aunt Wise breathed a positive sigh.  "You see, when you plan out the steps, it doesn't seem like it's something that's impossible or undoable at all.  You just have to set your sights on your goal and remain dedicated to it and take one step at a time until you reach it."

"Yes," she responded with dwindling enthusiasm.

"Why, my dear, why are you suddenly looking so discouraged?  You haven't even begun."

"Because-because it just dawned on me that my plan would probably take five years or so."

"So?"

"That's a long time to remain dedicated to something.  Besides, a million other things could happen between now and then."

Perplexed, she retorted, "For someone who's in the process of learning about time, now you sound like everyone else who hasn't had your experience.  No one wants to put in the work and the steps and the time to achieve what they really want.  So they avoid it and end up not having it at all.  But what's worse—the effort or not having the results?  I say, let's go!"

"What?"

"I mean, why don't you give it a go?"

Focusing on her wrist, she thought: I can avoid all these steps and all the time it would take to do them.  I only have to set this watch for five years from now, after I went through all this effort,  and I'm there—fluent in German and gliding past the castles on the Rhine.

"Of course, there's another—easier—way," she responded, her eyes gleaming with realization.

"What do you mean?" the woman wanted to know, "'another—easier—way?'"

Spearing the "time ahead" indentation with her nail as if she hit a bullseye, she proclaimed, "Why didn't I think of this before?  It's ingenious!  I can avoid all the steps and still have it all: the language, the trip, the experience…"

Alarmed, Aunt Wise exclaimed, "You still don't understand.  You…"

The date on the wrist-encircled time devise displayed five years from the present one.

6. Time Ahead

Settling into the floral armchair, Veronica glanced around the living room, from the teacups showcased behind the glass in the credenza to the French Provincial coffee table in front of her to the small bookcase on the far wall.

"Well, it seems exactly like I remember it," she said.

Jeanette smiled.  "When was the last time you were in my apartment—a year or two ago?"

"Oh, no," blurted the broad woman, her auburn hair extending out from either side of her head like a veil.  "It's been more like five years.  That's why I was kinda surprised to hear from you."

Digesting the fact herself, Jeanette put on a slightly puzzled mask.  "Yeah, well," she said at length, "I was thinking of you the other day and I decided to call."

"So you mentioned," the woman returned, as she sliced her fork into the velvety chocolate cake on her plate.

"Oh, I did?"

"Yes.  In fact, that's exactly what you said."

"Oh…oh, yes.  I guess I did."

"Anyway, you said you had something to share with me?"

"Yes," Jeanette responded in a more assertive tone.  "Remember when we used to talk about romping around Europe and maybe learning a foreign language or two—you with your French and me with my German?"

As the more than half-decade memory rekindled itself, it reflected in Veronica's eyes and she exclaimed with enthusiasm, "Yes!  Oh, yes.  I still say it would've been some experience—if I only could've gotten the money together."

"Well, I finally did."

"You did?  How in the world did you do that with this apartment and your love for clothes and everything?"

Thinking it over, she said, "Well, sometimes you have to make sacrifices to get the things you want in life."

"True," Veronica responded as she swallowed the last piece of cake on her plate, entering chocolate nirvana.  "I wish I had the willpower to do that sometimes," she added, as she pointed to the now-empty plate and laughed.

"Yeah, well, you should see my closet and my love for clothes now.  They're all still there, but they're more like antiques—preserved in a vault.  There's hardly a new stitch of anything among them."

"Well, Jeanette, I certainly give you credit.  But if you invited me here to ask me to take that trip with you—as much as I'd still love to after all these years—well, some things never change: I'm afraid I'm still as broke as a soup kitchen diner."

"Oh, no," Jeanette responded, shaking her head.  "I remember your paycheck.  I invited you here to share my trip with you.  I just came back."

Gathering enthusiasm the way a cotton candy machine coverts sugar around its vortex into the final product, she exclaimed, "Oh, Jeanette, that's wonderful!  I'm so happy for you.  Again, I give you credit for finally going.  If I couldn't go, I'm glad one of us could."

Beaming with pride, Jeanette said, "It took a long time and a lot of preparation.  You can't really appreciate another country unless you speak the language."

"You mean you even learned another language?"

Jeanette nodded.

"Well, you've been some busy woman.  I can't emphasize how much credit I give you that you went after your dreams.  By the way, which language did you learn?"

"German."

"Wow, I can imagine that must be a hard one to learn."

"No," Jeanette disagreed, "it's…it's…"  But she had neither the recollection of learning it nor any conception of what it was like.

Blotting her saucer with her napkin, Veronica chuckled.  "Wow, can you imagine that—my old friend actually learned another language.  I would probably sound like a novice compared to you with my high school French."

"Oh, don't be so hard on yourself, Veronica.  I would probably be no better with my German."

Furrowing her brow, Veronica returned, "What do you mean ‘probably?'  You already speak it."

"Yes, well," Jeanette stuttered, as she began to swallow a hard realization.

"I mean, French is a Romance language.  German's a Germanic one and, from what little I've heard, sounds very harsh and guttural."

"Yes, you're right.  It can be."

"For instance, French is soft.  If I wanted to say ‘hello'—as far as I can remember from my high school days—it was ‘bon jour.'  How would you say ‘hello' in German?"

Reconfiguring her posture into a more upright one on the sofa across from her, she said, "In German, it's…it's…ah…in German it's…"

Staring through her friend, she felt confused, as if she had suddenly been stricken with dementia.  "'Hello' in German is…"

"Oh, well," Veronica assured her, as a wave of embarrassment swept over Jeanette's face.  "You're probably still jet-lagged and all that.  If I had tried to learn German, I wouln't've gotten past the ABC's."

"Yeah, you're probably right about the time difference,  Squinting at the bookcase, she said after a few seconds, "Well, what I did want to share with you were my pictures from the trip."

Reclimbing her emotional ladder, Veronica said, "I'd love to see the pictures from your trip!  Germany must be beautiful."

"Yes," Jeanette agreed, as she retrieved one of the two photo albums from the shelf and handed it to Veronica, who promptly opened it.

"Now, this was…" Jeanette began.

But the first cellophane pocket was empty—as were all the others.

"Oh, silly me," Jeanette apologized.  "I took the wrong album."

Veronica released a commiserating laugh.

"Now, here," Jeanette once again narrated, as her friend opened the second book, "this was taken just after I…"  Looking at the same empty sleeves, she continued in a trailing and lower tone, "…after I…"

Putting her hand on her forehead and staring at the book in silence, she said, "I…I don't know what's wrong with me all of a sudden…I…I can't seem to remember anything."

Flushed with alarm, Veronica rose and took her friend's hand.  "Is there something wrong?  Maybe you should sit down."

"Yes," Jeanette agreed.  "I guess-I guess I should.  I don't know what's suddenly come over me."

"Maybe it is the jetlag—or the excitement of your trip and getting back into the routine of your life."

Shaking her head in confusion, she sounded aloud.  "I just don't know what I did with those pictures.  I-I thought I put them in the album already, but I guess…"

"Now, don't worry about it," Veronica assured her.  "Are you feeling ill?  Do you have a temperature?  Maybe you should take an aspirin—or, should I call a doctor?"

Sitting down, she rubbed her face.  "I…the pictures…the pictures from the trip…"  But the memory chest of her mind was empty.  "Let me just have a quick look in the bedroom."

"Let me help you."

"No," she shook her head, "it's all right.  I just want to have a quick look."

Releasing her supportive grip, Veronica felt like a mother releasing her baby for his first walk as Jeanette teetered toward the bedroom and was swallowed by the gaping mouth of its door.  It would be the last time that Veronica would see her.

Digging a trench in her pocketbook, Jeanette reached the bottom of it, yet found no photographs.  Maybe my dresser, she thought.  But plucking out sweaters and nightgowns, she equally only uncovered the wood grain of which its drawers had been made.

Visibly trembling, she approached her make up stand, looking at herself in the mirror and noticing fine lines, like arteries running throughout an oak leaf, on her face for the first time, as if she had aged in an instant.  Putting her left hand on her face and tracing them with her fingers, as she felt as if she looked like a younger version of a woman she had not seen for half a decade.

Of course! she thought.  She still could not determine where she had put her vacation photographs, but felt certain that her nicknamed aunt would, focusing on the reflection of the flesh-toned time device on her wrist.  Picking up her nail file, she jabbed at the "Time Back" indentation and depressed the "Year" button until it had flipped back to a five-year earlier display.

 

[Read the conclusion to this series in "A Story of Time: Part Three" on this very website.]