Time Flows By

 We think of time as something linear- past, present, future. But what if it was a helix that spirals and weaves the past, present, and future together as a whole? 

I am a middle-aged woman who grew up in a Conservative home in Tennessee. Now I have my own conservative home. We move a lot.  I wanted to write stories. I wanted my stories to be read by Levar Burton on Reading Rainbow. I wanted my stories to be read in universities. I wanted my stories to be read on my blog that has no followers. I didn't write them down. They aren't good enough.

Earth- 21 degrees north of the equator in the Pacific Ocean. After I landed in Hawaii, I threw my luggage into my non-air-conditioned dorm and immediately looked for a job. I didn't look Polynesian enough to work at the Polynesian Cultural Center. Another girl got the position to tutor English because I never studied Spanish but studied Japanese instead. I ended up serving food in the cafeteria. 

In between classes and before work I would sit on the rocks and looks at the giant waves. The moon looked larger in Hawaii in a purple sky. I wrote about it in a journal I lost. Maybe I threw it away to forget about a bad relationship? I moved back to Tennessee after a year of struggling with money.

 

I taught English to English teachers in a school for special needs in Seoul. Walking to the classroom to meet with the teachers after their school day ended, I saw children of all abilities mopping and sweeping the floors of the school. Our schools in America never made kids do this. Once I rode a train to Pusan on the coast

and stared at the sea, thinking of my home far away. 

I taught English in Tennessee to refugee children and loved it. Then 9/11 happened and changed my world. I ended up marrying a soldier and returning to Hawaii. I took my husband to the rocky beach I used to sit on when I was in college. I didn't speak Japanese this time. I spoke Russian to my mother-in-law who collected cans to recycle to pay for a surgery she wanted to get. She was there to help me with my babies when my husband was in Iraq. I forgot most of my Russian.

A couple of years ago I went to a Russian community in Latvia. I couldn't remember how to ask for medicine in Russian but I understood the old lady worried about one of my sons getting sick in the bathroom.

 I am now typing on a laptop in Germany. I need to pick up my son from school. There is no ocean nearby, but I can see the beautiful Rhine River. 

 I can't see my future through my past. I will be grandmother. I will feel a lot of pain and I will have joy. I think I am in control of my life. My spirit, my identity will be somewhere after I am gone. 

My writing isn't great, but I shouldn't quit. Maybe my kids will appreciate this. Maybe one of my descendants will be famous and read what I wrote on a program on a screen in a ice cream shop on one of the moons of Neptune. You can see an entire life on a blog post. 

(There is a reference to a story that I will write about soon. )