Someone left the TV on last night.
When I came downstairs the winter morning sun was beginning to lighten the living room, reflecting dully off the leather couches, and the analog clock screen saver on the television was slowly circling the big black rectangle mounted in the corner. The time on the bouncing clock read 7:08.
When the clock eventually stopped in the middle of the screen, as it does every 60 seconds or so, another line appeared below it: January 1, 2026. New Year's Day. That made me pause.
When I was a kid, our denied a big built in shelving system surrounding an incredibly modern two-foot thick clunky television with a million cables attached. Around the TV were dozens and dozens of books with different color covers. Some were probably just for looks, but others my mother (and I) read over and over again. One I can see clearly in my memory, probably because I inherited it and it is now in my bookshelf, is a light denim colored hardback called: "The War of 2020." I don't think I ever even tried to read that one.
When I snuck into my parents' books it was to read something like "Alive" or "Sybil": books that I had been warned were too scary or mature for me. I had no interest in something that had seemingly no relevance to my 1980's life. The year 2020? That was as fantastical in my mind as being a middle age mother of adult children who has a computer assistant in the car to direct me turn by turn and can ask my phone to create and book a travel itinerary to Bulgaria while I am simultaneously streaming documentaries on space travel! I had no ability to really grasp the concept of the year 2020...it was just going to exist with the Jetson's in my imagination.
When we (barely) survived Y2K in January of 2000 I stopped worrying about the new century because I was busy beginning a family and a whole new phase of chaos in my life. Some of those days were 36 hours long, but the next few decades somehow flew by and I ended up with three adult children, a couple of dogs, and some shelves full of inherited hardback books.
When I saw the date this morning, for some reason the back of that blue book flashed into my mind and I took my coffee into the living room toward the book shelves. There it was. "The War of 2020." I still have no idea what it is about, but the fact that I am now living in a moment that is 26 years past a futuristic imaginative time is boggling. Time does so many things: it flies, it crawls, it heals, it waits for no one and it can make strangers out of friends. With certainty, time marches forward.
"When I was a child I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned as a child," (1 Corinthians 13:11).
When I was a little I could not wait until my feet could touch the floor when I sat at the island stools. When I was small a hug from my mother could completely banish any fear of the future I felt. When my children were little a hug from me (and maybe ice cream) could fix their problems. When I used to sneak out of my bedroom to listen to the adults talk in the kitchen from my hidden vantage point in the Tupperware cupboard under the counter I believed that they were strong and wise and would keep us all safe. When I watched my father put hold a piece of paper as far away from his face as he could to be able to read that I thought it would never happen to me.
When I sat in the middle of any part of my life and looked around me, reality was simply that: what was around me. But truthfully: twenty years in the future is now 26 years in the past and that light blue denim book is still sitting on the top shelf of a book case in my house.
Is it time to actually open the book and read it? Maybe. When I finish my first cup of coffee of the year.
