Time Machine

I would like to meet my parents. I mean, meet the people they were when they weren’t just being my Mother and Father. Both have passed away, so to meet them now would require a time machine. I would set it to transport me back to the day they were introduced. Then I could see how they reacted upon meeting each other and observe their behavior as they tried to make a favorable impression.

My parents met in New York City during the Second World War. Dad was a sailor, disarmingly handsome and a silver-tongued charmer. I know this because his charm and good looks continued to be both assets and liabilities for the next two decades. Mom was a brassy fun-loving flirt. That was the description she offered of herself much later in life when I asked about the early years.

Mom said she fell in love with Dad the first moment she saw him. He was loud, conceited and a great dancer. She just had to meet him and make a date. I don’t know how Dad felt about her. He didn’t talk much about those times, except to say that he had married much too early.

I would like to travel back in my time machine and eavesdrop during important milestones in their lives; marriage proposal, wedding, birth of their children. Bad times would interest me as much as good times; the death of friends and family, fights, infidelities.

It is more than curiosity that makes wish for a secret window into the world of these two. I have a need to understand. How did two so very different people spend over half a century together amid such anger, resentment and violence while displaying so little love? Perhaps the answer might lie in the ability to watch their relationship change and evolve over time, beginning at a point before my birth.

I remember happy times in my early childhood. But I also remember angry words and physical violence. The violence escalated until I became fearful that someone might die. Sometimes the threat of violence was more frightening than the act itself. I remember an incident in which Mom stood at the top of the stairs with a straightened coat hanger, threatening to bring her eight-month pregnancy to a violent end. Dad shouted up to her; "Go ahead, I dare you to do it!" I stood behind him crying; "No, Mommy, no!" while pressing my little sister’s face against my chest to shield her eyes from the horror.

The following week a curious neighbor would have seen only a seemingly happy and normal family waiting to welcome its newest member into the world. Bizarre dramas like this were acted out behind closed doors and drawn curtains. They became our family secrets. These experiences left me a confused and conflicted child.

Alcohol played a role in many of these incidents. It seemed always to be present.

I survived my childhood. It is far behind me now. Although similar painful experiences helped to shape the person I am, they do not condemn me to a life of acting out past psychic traumas, thank God.

On second thought, I have no need to travel back in a time machine. What good would be accomplished by reliving those years? What new knowledge would I gain by experiencing the same events, this time as an observer rather than a participant? What would be changed?

My time would be better spent looking into myself and identifying the negative attitudes and behaviors that have resulted from past experiences. Once identified I can work to change them. If alcohol abuse contributed to dysfunction in the family of my childhood than I would be wise not to abuse alcohol and risk the same fate for my present family.

But, as a fan of science fiction I wonder, what if I really could climb into a time machine and magically transported myself to the New York City bar where my parents met that night in March of 1945? What would I do when I arrived?

I loved my Mother and Father. Knowing what disappointment and pain the future held in store for them, I might choose to interfere with their introduction and prevent them from meeting. I alone would know what future they would miss. At the moment I stepped between them and changed their fate I would cease to be, having exchanged my own existence for the possibility of a happier life for two strangers who would not become my parents.