Ancestors

All this time without words is weighing heavily on me. If I can't file a few moments and images into words then what will happen to them?

There's no theme or red thread I can see in my scattered thoughts. Too much coffee again and I must admit it's a feeling I like somewhat, a feeling that I need to race.

Last night, dinner with all the family at Linda and Dave's house. It had long since gotten dark, and we had finished the turkey dinner they'd made for American Thanksgiving. Everyone was sitting around sort of in a circle around the fireplace and coffee tables, eating pie, drinking wine.

The room was dimly lit and there was a warm glow from the fire. I suddenly saw the scene as if I was standing outside of the room, looking through the window. The group of faces I know so well were talking and laughing. It was a typical moment like many other family dinners before, but time and distance away from them let me see them from outside the window: fragile, balanced on the edge of time, gathered around a glowing light in the vast darkness of night.

They looked for a moment like what they would someday become: ancestors. So I felt for a moment like I was invisible, back from a future where nobody thought it possible to see those ancestors anymore. I saw something that family members not born yet might one day try to imagine, and only see dimly, (the way I see the ones before, in Scotland, in England, newly arrived in Canada...)through the mist of time and ideas formed from old letters and photographs. Here they are: it's the year 2006, they're together, they're laughing, they're dressed in clothing from that era. At least right now, in this moment I rip from times notebook to slip into my pocket.

Sometimes it hits me (yes, like the clichéd ton of bricks) how our section on the timeline here on earth is limited, finite. Remember learning timelines in school? Here is a timeline of all the kings and queens of France. Here is a timeline of early man: see how he walks more and more upright. Here is a timeline of your life: it started one day and it will end one day. See how what's in between becomes fragile and fleeting. And also how it isn't really like that drawn pencil line at all. It has loops, it has pauses, it has sidetrack after sidetrack, it has skips and repeats and it changes size and colour. Music changes it, weather changes it, a sudden landing of hundreds of birds outside the window changes it.