Skeptical about time travel? You do it every day. Pick up a book, magazine, letter – email, text, anything posted on social media for that matter (everyone’s a writer) – and just feel that immediate transport, to another time, place, space of consciousness. “Zwhipp,” as my mom used to say.
Read this letter from my dad – Private G604760 Canadian Armed Forces – to his sister, as WWII wound down. Zwhipp. We’ve travelled back 70 years, my dad is 22, very much alive, and the notion of me isn’t even, well, a notion.
Whitby, England
May 4, 1946
Dear Effie,
I got your letter the other day. I got the parcel (he’d previously requested shoes, polish and socks) before I went on leave. It came in handy, thanks a lot for going to so much bother. Van (Dad’s brother) and I got our leaves at the same time and went to Edinburgh. We had 14 days. I expect to go on leave again before I go home.
I’m glad you got the binoculars ok. I had a pair like that stolen from me the first time I went to Glasgow. They sell for about 50 or 60 dollars (620 – 740 in today’s dollars!) over here, but I didn’t want to bring them with me in case they had searched us. But as it was, they didn’t search anyone. I’d just as soon not sell them anyway, they’re nice to have.
The last I heard from Mama she had all my parcels but two. Just wait till you see the machine gun I sent home. I’ll bet I can keep peace in the family with that.
I guess I’ll be getting home ahead of Van. I’ll have his truck to run if I do, but believe it or not I’ve made enough money to buy me a car and it’s not from the buck and a half a day either.
I bet Grammie and Gramp enjoyed the party they had. I wish I could have been there.
Well I guess that’s all I can think of for now.
So Long, Love, Vince
If you want to check out the other two WWII letters I have of my dad’s, in fact all I know about his war experience, they’re posted in Dear Ol’ Dad and Day To Remember. You get a sense of his wry humour here – “keep peace in the family with that”. I’m not sure how he made the money for that car (which I believe was a cool-looking maroon Studebaker), but those were trading days; he didn’t smoke, so cigarettes made good currency, and he was always picking up other forms of money here and there, like machine guns, binoculars and swords. Had he saved the buck and a half a day throughout the war (I’m sure he spent some while on various leaves) he would have accumulated about $1,369, or $16,904 in today’s dollars, so more than enough to buy himself some decent wheels.
My dad was my hero – a handsome, intelligent, charismatic bank manager and fixer of all things broken, including my throat which was often sore. He was also a realist, an atheist, and because I idolized him, I believe I became these things too. What I’ve discovered though, and I believe my dad did too but an addiction to alcohol hindered the ability for soul expansion, is that attachment to seemingly real, material things does you absolutely no good when they start to disappear, such as when loved ones die.
The biggest light bulb that pinged while on my grief journey after my first husband Hugh died? I was watching What the Bleep!? The topic was quantum physics and scientists were showing experiments which proved a particle could exist in two places at the same time. So, what then is reality? Whoa.
In How to Know God, Deepak Chopra writes, “At the quantum level the whole cosmos is like a blinking light. There are no stars or galaxies, only vibrating energy fields.” Don’t you just love it when spirituality and science meet?
Einstein put it this way: “Everything is energy and that’s all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality that you want and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy, this is physics.”
What reality do you want? And how do you gain access to that reality when it seems there’s never enough of that old intangible, time? Ticking away, tick-tock, tick-tock, wreaking havoc on body and mind? I came across this Celtic saying – it’s possible I’ve used it before – but when I think of it, I’m calmed in my questing. “When God made time, He made enough of it.”
Relax. There is enough time. And I’d like to help you continue pursuing your best reality, with a perception of time that will blow your mind. But, I’ve run out of time. Next week!
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