In a true sense, we are all time travelers who occasionally make trips to the past or the future.
Whether we are willing to admit it or not, each of us have found ourselves getting aboard the time train and temporarily journeying back or forward in time.
The track that we travel on is comprised of our memories and imaginations.
Perhaps all of us have found ourselves temporarily suspended in time while looking at old pictures of ourselves and others.
These photos indeed take us back to yesterday and a time when we were much younger, smaller, and perhaps more attractive.
How many have looked at photo albums of special events, like weddings, high school and college graduations, snapshots of infants, family, or class reunions and actually was temporarily transported back in time – back to a day when we were young and full of dreams and ambitions for the future?
Many have made frequent trips back in time through listening to golden oldies.
These ballads and songs can quickly take you back to a specific event and place. They can stimulate your memory and project in your mind the good and bad episodes of yesterday.
I have gone back in time temporarily just by listening to Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Smoky Robinson, Nat King Cole, Glen Campbell, Frank Sinatra, and my favorite group of all time, the Temptations.
Then how can I forget the effect that singing and listening to old hymns and spiritual songs has upon me as they take me back to my youth, to a simpler time when I was attending the little Pentecostal church on Dargan Street in Newtown.
I will venture to say that many people, especially parents who struggle with the complexity of living vicariously through the lives of their children, find themselves going back temporarily to a time when they were their child’s age and experiencing a similar event or situation.
Perhaps all of us who are parents have cheered and celebrated our children’s performance as athletes, band members, actors, and etc. as we saw ourselves in their shoes when we were their age.
One of the most common ways that we temporarily go back in time through our memory and imagination is when we visit places and sites that we frequented while growing up.
Every time I visit Gordon Elementary School, I am transported back in time – back to a time when I was in the first grade through the twelfth grade.
Through the eyes of my memory and imagination, I see faces and people who I grew up with.
I see Mrs. Robinson and Mr. Herbert Crawford, my first grade and fifth grade teachers respectively, as I swiftly move forward in time.
Due to the fact that I am one who is fascinated with history and nostalgia, I am more prone than the average person to be taken back to the place called yesterday. Like Gulliver, the lead character in the fiction “Gulliver’s Travel.” I am a frequent time traveler.
Through the vehicle of my memory and imagination, I can instantly zoom back to almost any time and happening in my personal history, revisiting these events and experiences almost at will. Somewhere deep in the memory of all of us is a shadowy land. It is a real place called yesterday.
It is a never, never land where we are always young. It is a place of excitement and adventure where we are the heroes and heroines in the drama of our lives, though there are memories of trouble, grief, and sadness that await us in the place called yesterday.
These negatives cannot compare with the joy and laughter that we shall experience, as we stroll down memory lane while feasting on the thoughts and good times of yesterday.
Perhaps our paths will cross if you were a character in my historical narrative.
Whatever the case, I wish you smooth sailing in your excursion to the place called yesterday.