Blog 2146 – 08.11.2121
During our travels through space and time we get to see ourselves at different ages and unless we are afflicted with amnesia, Alzheimer’s, some debilitating brain injury, or by our own choice block certain memories, or try to rewrite our own history, we are free to travel back through those memories at our leisure. Often times there are lessons to be learned that we missed the first time, second, third and tenth time we revisit those ages.
When talking to a small child I often ask, “How old are you?” and whatever their answer I usually reply, “That is a great age to be.” And indeed all ages have something to recommend them. I often remark that we have more to learn from children and grandchildren than they have to learn from us. The reason is that they, as their lives unfold before us, open us up to understand how we thought and acted at their age and that has a way of removing so many misunderstandings from our early lives where and when we first began to believe things that long ago ceased to serve us.
My daughter Emily and son Jonathan have taught me so much about Who and Whose I really am. Emily turned me on to the writings of Madeline L’Engle when she was a young teenager and Jay and I have had many long and deep conversations on subjects far and wide. He is both a wise and compassionate teacher from who I have learned so much about the world and myself.
I have shared this before, but as I do many things I probably will again. Since a boy I have been fascinated with the idea of time travel and still read all I can find on the subject and have watched countless movies over and over again with that theme. I remember telling Jon when he was a boy that if in the future he ever invents a time travel machine to please come back and visit me. I confess I am always on the look out to meet a handsome intelligent man who reminds me of myself, a perhaps older version of my son come back from the future to have a conversation with his ole dad.
Whether the technology is ever developed to travel through time, we already have the ability to time travel back through the detailed memories of events that we have lived through, memories recorded in stereophonic sound, technicolor, with vivid and exact details down to the smells. I am told that certain smells can invoke memories. One of my favorite smells is Marilyn Monroe’s signature scent and that of my loving and lovely wife Linda. It is Chanel No. 5. My mother always wanted to have a bottle of that expensive perfume and after her two boys left home she took a job outside the home and with money she had earned herself bought her a bottle. Proud of her treasure she put some on and asked my dad what he thought of it and he hurt her feeling with a thoughtless remark. He told her it made her smell like a whore. Dad, Dad, you should have known that whores better than many women know expertly how to please a man. Fellow, you really messed up what might have been a wonderful night of passion in which Chanel No. 5 might have also become one of if not your most favorite scent.
I make sure to always keep a couple of extra bottles on hand so my wife will never run out. I even keep a partially used bottle by my bed to spray when I am especially homesick for my daring and darling enchantress. As I have said more than a few times these now over two months that I have been in Nebraska on a work assignment, this is my last rodeo. When this work is done, hopefully by Christmas, I plan to spend the rest of my time, this go round, or as much as I am permitted, with my soulmate who looks and smells a lot like MM, my beloved LL. We share a bit more than thirty-two years of history together, but I have a sneaky suspicion that we have shared countless lives together already and I hope we will yet share many more to come. I hope this is not our last rodeo together.
Your friend and fellow traveler,
David White
Amarillo By Morning
theencouragingword 