Slipping Away: The Time Paradox

It has been four months and fourteen days ever since I noticed a wrinkle in the time. We are all making a journey into the past, and the wrinkles on my face still remain unresolved. I guess I should not be shocked. It took years for my daughter to carve these lines on my face.

I tackled the task of putting on the butterfly print blouse that Teresa bought me on my 40th birthday as the sun positioned itself in the west. Admittedly, it is not the kind of look I fancy, but at least it brought happiness to her. Back down the stairs in the kitchen, I made some cheese sandwiches and placed them together with the cups of pudding inside the picnic basket. Always her choice was vanilla. I place the basket in the backseat of the car. The ladder and the shovel are already in the back of the car.

I head east out of the city with the sun at my back. Almost immediately, I notice and drive past Jackson’s Pharmacy who seems to have been reduced to mere bricks. I see Jackson and some construction workers frantically attempting to repair the damage that was created while they, and time, were away. I remember seeing burnt-out buildings that had a meth problem back then, which thank god, time has not affected, and probably won’t. At the very beginning of this mess, I remember listening to several scientists and other people yell back and forth, trying to describe why some things were going backward and others were not. Even tried to rationalize why we all were not simply walking backward and incoherently babbling. But such is the unfortunate reality that for all these exaggerated immutable laws of nature, there has always existed the concept of arbitrariness or random action, which had always presided over the cosmos. And cycles were just ages of fortune.

As I am nearing the end of the pavement, I am forced to look down on the road. I don’t want to look at the playpark. I know the picture. Everyone knows the picture. None of the added sober voice commentary is done. Little toddlers dodding around and their mothers failing to hold it together. Younger and younger, mentally, every single day. It's a tragic movie, only that at this point all the events are happening in a slow motion. And slightly different from the previous version prior to this novel’s events. I appreciate it for what it is now.

I drive into the Greenville Cemetary, take the picnic stuff, a tree spade, and a ladder and carry them down the slope. I notice some men fracturing the earth with their hands across the rows of tombstones. There are even backhoes at work. So alien. But this is not the way you would expect to excavate someone from the earth if you had not seen them for some time.

The grass is dead in front of her tombstone beton harf, gone to seed, and begging for the steel fang of my shovel. I was almost certain that the earth would simply pop out of the hole without any assistance. There is never such luck. So I dig. I dig and dig and dig as Eastern skies fill with overcast clouds that are inwardly rotated to the Operations’ angling, reversed from that day. The day that had arrogantly, rolled in its heavy grey peers. In the early days of the slip, there were those who thought that rain would one day ceased to be and would instead begin to flow upwards back into the ground and out into the sky. That didn’t happen even. Instead, the weather just retraced its steps, this time from the other side. Now weather forecasts are just a fancy version of a calendar, warning you of what is yet to come. A prediction is made that it is likely to rain with effect from 2:34 pm. I hope I got the timing right.

With a clatter, my spade strikes the outer rim of the coffin sending chips flying even as the rains threatened to come down. The remaining dirt I scoop and hand toss back into the grave, protecting the grave of my baby in every way possible. The rain intensifies and I find myself sliding against the earthen walls, which are the ropes of the ladder. It is rain, getting rid of most of the dirt that has clung on Teresa's coffin and cowarding me, much like a cleansing shower. I spread the blanket and place the basket in the corner, just the way she adored. I put on the butterfly top which becomes transparent as rain falls and wait. 124 days ago, it was rain, a deer, and thin brake pads that rendered me purposeless. I wonder, might we meet that doe again? Or is there a mother somewhere waiting for her baby’s ravaged skeletal remains to be unearthed and returned?

Now I wait. You can expect the awful sounds, scratching, and satin getting ripped. I anticipate her cries signaling she is back to life. Wait to bust open the coffin and bear her crushed form while screaming for someone, who will help out of this pit filled with ooze, to stop her unpleasant wails. Then we will spread out on the blanket, teary-eyed, with happiness, pain, and dread. Reattachment of legs both ways and reattachment of hearts. I purposely disregard the images of what is going to happen twenty years and a couple of months from now when time will once again come for my child. Focus on the next available days that will be in the foreseeable future as hers is healing and I will have to look after her once again. Right now, I’m just thankful.

Thankful for that initial wail of a newly resurrected being. Until we all dissipate.