Unsent Letters #24

On Time and Ladybugs

Photo by Juanita Swart on Unsplash, rendered black & white by me

Dear T.,

“Time has this tendency to pass.” -- I’m not sure who wrote or said this, maybe no one. Maybe I just imagined that I read or heard it somewhere. I don’t know. Time heals, adjusts, reveals, teaches, ripens, prepares, fills, smooths, educates, enriches, shapes, forgets, and paints. But it has one major flaw: it passes. 

Time used to pass more slowly, long ago. When I was little, we had to wait three hours at the beach before going in the water. It had to be three hours, not two hours and fifty minutes. Mom was very strict about this. I didn’t even know how to read the clock, but I was told that when the long hand completed three full rounds, it was time. I remember checking Mom’s watch every few minutes to see where the long hand was, and it felt like it didn’t move.

At some point, time started accelerating, and it suddenly became scarce. It might as well have happened overnight; or perhaps it was gradual. I can’t pinpoint exactly when or how I began to perceive time as no longer abundant. Is this a bit like the story of the frog in boiling water? I’m usually bad at metaphors, but maybe you understand.

Yesterday a friend asked whether I was already writing, in my late twenties and early thirties, when I lived in New York. No, I answered. The life I was conducting didn’t leave me any time to think, or just be idle, which to me are essential prerequisites for writing. Thinking without doing anything else is not considered work, even though it should be. After all, great changes have come from just freely thinking, not from moving levers or pressing buttons or running spreadsheets. And yet, if you’re caught thinking without doing anything else, you’re admonished and told you’re not being productive. Thinking is perhaps the most productive activity of all. Anyway, my life back then wasn’t designed for idleness, and I don’t know what I’d give to get some of that time back, with energy at its highest, in a place where anything was possible, and available.

All this preamble to introduce that the other day my cousin Patrizio sent me a short video. It was amateur footage from his parents’ wedding, back in 1970, fifty-four years ago. He had found an old, dusty Super 8 reel somewhere in his house, with Matrimonio handwritten on a yellowed label stuck to its cardboard box. He brought it to someone who could convert it into a digital file. In the short clip he sent me, I saw Mom, my sister, and myself, among many others.

It was a clear day in early spring, perhaps still somewhat cold, as people were wearing coats. The colors had vibrant, rich, and saturated hues, giving the images a nostalgic look. Reds were vivid, blues deep, greens lush, and skin tones warm and natural. It was 1970s vintage photography at its effortless best, minus the filters people use today to reproduce the same effect. Holding hands with Mom and smiling at whoever was filming, four-year-old me was wearing a beige coat, short pants, white socks, and black shoes. Mom looked beautiful, with her black hair pulled up and a short white coat. A little to the right, my sister was wearing a red coat and holding hands with two adults that I struggled to recognize at first but later recalled as two close friends of the family, always present at these types of events and often found in many photos. My little brother was just a few months old and back at home, I learned later. Dad wasn’t in the clip. Was he the one filming, perhaps? No one remembered. An atmosphere of general positivity could be perceived, and infinite possibility. I thought that this was the only document I have with child-me in motion.

I was seated in my bedroom armchair when the characteristic sound of an incoming message announced that the clip had reached my phone. The darkness of the evening had already filled the room, as if a cuttlefish had sprayed its ink everywhere, the only light coming from the reading lamp pointing at the open book on my lap. I smiled, then got emotional, then thought about what I could possibly have been thinking right there, in that little four-year-old head of mine. I looked happy, with nothing to worry about except children’s things. Perhaps I was hungry, or looking forward to my return home, where I had my toys to play with. Or maybe I was just having a good time and focusing on what was happening before my eyes, where someone was shooting a film. And how strange and exceptional that was: a film, something so complicated, something that was only on TV, shot by a simple person? I was there, in motion, sending a message from the past to present-time me. I didn’t know, in the film, that someone from the future would be watching and wondering what I was thinking. And, while at it, falling into a deep sleep in a matter of seconds. 

I slowly opened my eyes when someone shook my arm. It was a gentle touch, a nudge. Still out of focus, a little child in a beige coat and short pants was standing next to me, his smile radiating peace and wisdom. As I realized, once in full focus, that he was me at four, looking like I did on the day of the wedding, I was suddenly afraid to hear him speak. I was afraid to hear my four-year-old voice, strangely. This is hard to explain, but I thought I would fall into an emotional breakdown if I heard my own voice at that age. The clip I received had no audio, only some weird background music that the guy who digitized the reel had added, I later learned from my cousin.

Please don’t speak, I caught myself saying in a faint voice. He didn’t budge, continuing to look me in the eyes. He was expecting to hear something from me, some revelation of sorts. Of course, I thought, I know the future. I know his future. He wants me to tell him something; he wants guidance from me. The proverbial ‘advice to my younger self’. An idea that I’ve always found stupid and useless, even as a simple, innocent exercise. But now I really had my younger self in front of me, waiting for my words. I didn’t know where to begin. Gosh, there were so many things that I would do different, if only I had a time machine. So many mistakes that I could have avoided. So many mistakes that I could have helped my loved ones avoid. 

You know, I started, life is strange, and hard to explain. Do you really want to know what will happen to you? This is a little like wanting to know what other people think. If someone came along now and offered this power to you, would you take it? I wouldn’t. Knowing the future, to me, is a bit like that. So, I will say just one thing, something you can see for yourself right now, right here, with your own eyes: I’m still around.

He nodded, and kept smiling. Then, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a little toy ladybug, all red and black and beautiful, made of a nice smooth plastic material that probably no longer exists. Or perhaps never existed. He held the ladybug in his palm, extending it out to me. Is this for me? I asked, delicately grabbing it. He nodded again. And I suddenly had a flash of memory and remembered that plastic ladybug. I recalled that I was so attached to it and kept it in my pocket all the time, because someone had told me that it brought good luck, even though I didn’t really know what good luck meant. I forget who told me. I held the ladybug in my hand, feeling its texture for a few seconds, something I hadn’t done in more than fifty years. Then I handed it back to him. You keep it, I said. It will be with you, keep you company, and maybe bring a little luck, sometimes. He put it back into his pocket and kept staring at me. And as he started to become transparent, I fell back asleep.

The first light of day woke me in my bed, pajamas on and all, and the ladybug was on my pillow. 

I’d probably always had it, I said to myself in a scarcely convincing voice. 

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"Unsent Letters" is a series released every other week. These are imaginary letters to fictitious or real individuals who may or may not have influenced my life, not always mirroring actual events.

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