time travel

There is such a thing as time travel. It doesn't involve fancy machines, casting circles or calling allies and spirits from other dimensions. Time travel is part of the human experience. Heck, for all I know animals and plants do it too. As a therapist, I kind of specialize in it. I invite people to journey back to an earlier chapter of their lives, encouraging them to tweak and twiddle with perceptions of events, thereby changing the present and the future.

But you don't need to be in therapy to time travel. Just attend a high school reunion or call a friend you haven't talked to in years. This past weekend I was trundled back in time to the era I lived in Cannon Beach. In many ways, I'm still there. Jan dying will probably mean that I spend a lot of the upcoming months back in time. Every few hours a new memory pulls me back. Rooms open up that I haven't been in for decades. Moonlight on sand and smoke in bars are ventured back to.

I am time traveling, there is no doubt about that. How this will change my future, I'm not sure. But it will. That is the power of time travel, the gift and the curse. Traveling back in time, we change the present and the future. I'm grieving Jan, but in deep gratitude for the journey her death is taking me on. Snapshots and postcards will be forthcoming.