This afternoon I got into my truck to drive into town and saw Widget, my Australian Heeler, walk out from his place in the shade of the mock orange bushes on the side of the house. He’d come out to see me and the least I could do was return the favor. I got out, knelt down and rubbed the sleep from the corners of his eyes and when he was looking square into mine I asked him to please come find me in heaven. I told him I’m going to need his help and that I hope he’ll meet me whenever I show up. Widget’s brown eyes showed no sign of comprehension, but if you don’t ask, the answer’s always no. So I asked, and personally, I think he’ll be there when the time comes.
Back in the truck and driving down the long driveway past the barn and stables, the arena full of weeds, and out the gate I thought about the time with Widget and about the changes that will happen in my life because of how I spent those two minutes. Each decision changes everything that follows and each day is filled with an almost infinite stream of moments. Twists and turns that lead to….more twists and turns. And whither then? What’s out there waiting round each corner? The only answer is the one the grizzled New Englander whittling on the front porch of the general store gave to the tourist asking whether it was going to rain that day; “Hard tellin’, not knowin'”.
Tomorrow I’m taking grandkids to a resort hotel down on the coast. They want to go on a water slide that corkscrews for a hundred and twenty feet of distance and thirty or so feet of elevation change and empties into a pool near a cave-like grotto. Almost twenty-six years to the day, the very same hotel was about to open its doors to customers and I was doing punch list clean up work for the terrazzo company I was working for. The pools had just been filled and were being inspected for leaks and new hotel staff was being trained. Most of the construction crews were long gone but there was still quite a few workers like myself on the grounds, aware that very soon we were going to have to move on, find other work or take a long unpaid vacation. (A resume of mine had been in the hands of the Operations Manager of Atlantis Submarines in Kona for a few months but that’s another story, and at the time I had no idea what, if anything, was going to happen there.)
Four o’clock rolled by and someone put three garden hoses at the top of the water slide and turned them on full blast. Another someone found a bottle of dishwashing soap and slicked up the first twenty feet of the slide walls with it. Word spread fast and in no time there were about ten construction workers stripped down to their blue jeans and whooping and hollering as they followed each other down that slide to splash into the pool overflowing with soap suds. We were celebrating, that much was clear, but what? The end of the day? A job well done? The unknown that waited somewhere out ahead of us?
It didn’t take long for someone to chase us out of there, but for a few beautiful minutes we were just kids having a good time, the first of many to come, sliding happily down that slide and headlong into the future. Tomorrow I’m going to have to pay for the pleasure of revisiting my past. My grandkids will think I’m there with them, little knowing that I’ll be time traveling with a big smile on my face, moving backwards along the twists and turns of the past decades until I meet myself one hot afternoon a long time ago, the first guy down the water slide.
(the slide now)
Tags: kids, old men, one direction and slow, Time travel, water slide
