no back in time

nearing independence day

     I’m sitting in the cool, windy sunshine that’s hotter as light, missing home. Home when they were sailing Sunfish. And when I was twelve I used to miss this time also, and ask my mother if she thought that in heaven I might get to live it over again. Cry and insist there must be some way to go back in time. But as I see it now, there’s not, and even if I went back to the place, I’d be stuck there as a woman, maybe with children. I’d have to take care of people; I couldn’t get in trouble, wander off on my own, hide in the woods pretending they were endless, look to someone else to solve all the problems.
     Why did women push for “liberation” again? Children have almost no rights except to be protected, and aren’t they leading the most liberated life of all? Is it more liberating to have responsibility heaped on your shoulders and expectations pulling at your throat or to sit back and have someone stroke your hair, hoping the best for you but willing to step in and take over when you mess up, are too tired, too frustrated to go on. When does this happen again after childhood? And why do people want to be responsible for themselves rather than have someone take care of them?


     Do you get to live it over again? When you get to the end, do you even want to? Every moment, it seems, there could be mourning for the one before, as well as amazement at the present.
     They tell you to close the windows before the sun comes up if you want to keep out the heat. It’s hard to know when the sun is coming, though, and right before it arrives there is the coolest of air, the chill, and you find yourself anticipating that first flicker of heat, needing it.
     Then the sun slips in and burns.