"Phone Home"

"Phone Home"

I have an idea for two little stories. In one I buy an old rotary phone at a flea market. I take it home plug it in, and dial my childhood phone number.

My Mom answers.

Time has twisted on itself somehow via the mixture of old, and new phone technologies, and patched me through to 1960. So there I am with my Mommy on the line. Our phone lines stretching fifty three years to connect us.

I haven't taken this plot further. What would I say...if anything.

In another story I'm on the train to Hollis Queens. I get off at that station, and notice that summer has turned to winter. The platform has shed forty nine years.

Men wear brimmed hats, and all the ladies are in dresses. The streets are fresh, the buildings seem newer, and the cars have fins. According to the newsstands Kennedy is President, and Elvis is still King.

The MTA has delivered me to 1962.

My dear, and long departed Aunt Sybil lives here. We always called her "Mum". No one remembers why. Just as we don't know how my sister became "Cookie".

Anyway back then this part of Queens was still tidy tree lined, and full of flowers. I'd forgotten how lovely it was before the city's squalor swallowed it up. I walk to Auntie's house. I ring her bell, she opens the door.

"Hi Mum" I quietly say.

She knows who I am at once, and invites me in. I pour my heart out to her just as I did as a lad. She cooks as she listens.

I'm "almost an old man" I tell her. I'm "tired, sad", and confused. The 21st century is a cruel, and bitter place. I can't find the strength to keep faith with all she, and my Mother had taught me. She listens, and comforts, and instructs as only she could.

I mention our going to the moon then stopping. Never it seems to return. She smiles as I describe our little robots driving around on mars, crashing into rocks, and flipping over into ditches. I tell her about our Negro President. She nods thoughtfully.

I spend an afternoon in 1962 with Auntie. Back there when our biggest problems were merely nuclear annihilation, and racial integration. Such an innocent time it was.

After a wonderful meal, and helpful words I leave my version of Heaven. Mum keeps our trans-temporal meeting her secret.

49 years to the day later. My cousin Darrell, Mum's only surviving son, hands me a  yellowed envelope.

Yes, It's from my dear Auntie.

She set it aside to be delivered to me over twenty years after her death.

What does it say?

I don't know.

I haven't opened it yet.