Back to the future

Moving from England to Canada involved travel in a number of directions, I'm finding: back to North America, forward in time. Recently I had a reunion with an ex-boyfriend and, I hope, non-ex-friend, who is Canadian and lives in Montreal. He was passing through Toronto and suggested we meet for lunch. Our relationship took place about two decades ago, in Berkeley, long before I met my current--and future--husband (who, joining us over coffee, quite liked the ex). While we have moved forward in time and I westward in space, our reunion took me backward in life, to a time when my path was still unknown and forming day by day, a time when I enjoyed freedom and self-indulgence above the San Francisco Bay, in spite of being penniless (but never poor, my mother would remind me) and untethered, and the future had so much possibility that it was effectively empty; that infamous blank canvas. The present was a riot of fun and frolic, but the view forward was of a question mark, and as such, somewhat frightening. In fact, a lot frightening.

Earlier today I was reading from Bill Bryson's edited volume Icons of England. Kate Adie wrote a nostalgic piece for the book about the deer at Raby Castle, in Staindrop, Co. Durham. Instantly came to my mind a lovely outing that husband, children and I made to the same place, when our youngest was in a pram that needed to be pushed over uneven paths through the woods. We ended in the village tea shop eating cakes, just as proper English outings are meant to end. Ah, those long ago days, my eyes grow misty and my heart soft, et cetera, et cetera. And then I pulled myself up short and remembered that I am meant to be pining for Sussex, for the homestead in Hove, the friends in Brighton, for Lewes on Bonfire Night, for a different past, or at least for a different chapter of the past.

And suddenly my life flashes before my eyes as I realize how many chapters my past has. Here I am in my own future. I've made so much history! None of it's earth-shattering, children won't be reading about it in textbooks, but from my perspective the view backward is rich, varied, and full of detail. It's so heavy, anchoring me. Moving to Toronto feels like a kind of watershed, the event that makes me realize that my frightening future has turned into my satisfying past. Okay, maybe the joints are creaking, the skin is wrinkling, and the kids teach me how to work the television; it means I'm old. But the future is no longer a vast and empty cavern. The mists are clearing.