Transcending Time

Time Travel
The old man sat on a rock staring intently at the pigeons. The pigeons wondered aimlessly amongst the ducks. He wondered how two species could get along so easily. Sure, they fought for the scraps of bread carelessly tossed their way.  But, they had a partnership with well defined lines. If you're small and only travel by land and air, you're a pigeon. If you're larger, swim, and annoy the piss out of the old man with an peeving quack, you're a duck. The old man stared at the fowl with a scowl. Deep down, he wasn't pondering the biological niche each bird filled. He wondered where the years had gone. He remembered being young and alive, thinking he could change the world. He remembered the flutter of the butterflies in his stomach telling him he was in love. He remembered watching the sunset over the pond, casting a beautiful orange flow on the ripples in the water. When he saw this glow, he would imagine he was flying over field of oranges waiting to be squeezed into a tall glass to accompany his bacon and eggs. Once upon a time, this sunset was new to him. He stares the breeze in the face, mindful of each molecule passing through the wrinkles in his leathery face. His socks don't match. But, he doesn't care. He's done the impossible, he's descended time. A time before grey hair and aching, arthritic hands. A time when he could enjoy a cigarette, when he was ten feet tall and bullet proof. Before promiscuity was socially acceptable. Was he promiscuous? Of course not. He never had time, if for no other reason. His father died when he was 14 and he was the oldest of five kids. He grew up quick at a juvenile age. But he didn't regret it. Just as he didn't regret being married to the same woman for 53 years. Or his painful arthritis. He had earned it. It takes a tough son of a bitch to get old. He's as tough as they come.
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She didn't know they were her hands. She didn't care. In fact, she didn't have a care in the world. Her surroundings were a mysterious as Sherlock Holmes novel. What's this brown thing with green fingers growing out of the water? The flash across the orange sky lights up the twilight. Static electricity was far beyond her current mental capacity. As most things are. Understanding the sedimentation and erosion around the wallow was at least a few more years ahead. The joys of boys and the phenomenon of green grass between her tiny toes was another pleasure she had to look forward to. The son and the moon and the birds and the bees are all her play ground. She may become a chemistry teacher explaining entropy to 6th graders. She'll be an astronaut. Perhaps the first person to lightly pounce from place to place on a distant satellite of Saturn. Her mom hopes she will become a research scientist, discovering the ever elusive cure to AIDS, securing her immortality. Daddy hopes she's happy. Whether she's a house wife in a small Midwestern town married to a local mechanic. Or she's a successful day trader on wall street, if that's what pleases her. The world is her for the taking. Though, she doesn't paint the landscape, she's content to stroll through the gallery of life. She'll laugh, she'll cry. She will enjoy the rising and setting of the sun. Probably break a leg falling out of her "girls only" tree house. She may paint her toenails pink on night while talking to her friends on her bed during a sleepover. These thoughts overwhelm her. She goes back to the simple pleasures of life: being pushed in a stroller wondering of the curiosities of her phalanges.