This is a short story “interlude” from my in-progress big book on the nature of reality, Cosmic Ecology: God’s Evolving Dream
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old time is still a-flying
And that same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying
Robert Herrick, To the Virgins to Make Much of Time
I had a most peculiar dream about time and loss. My wife, Greta, was leaving me — but not in the way you may expect.
She was particularly beautiful the morning I suspected something strange was going on. She pulled her hair behind her left ear to better read her Sunday paper and leaned forward to focus her gaze. At the same time, she moved toward me about half a foot because I was sitting across the table from her reading my own section of the paper. I appreciated again the new frames in her glasses and reaffirmed internally that I had indeed done very well to marry such a through and through beautiful woman.
The morning light, always flattering with its softness and promise of renewal, was also revealing of the ravages of age. The warm light was sugar coating and it was true in the way a good but cruel joke was made more funny because it was so true — in a way that you wish were not so.
This morning, however, was different because the light was sharp enough that I noticed Greta had not a single wrinkle on her face. I gazed intently at her and could not see a single crow’s toe, let alone a crow’s foot. No laugh lines. Nothing. Greta was 48 years old.
“Greta, have you been undergoing some new treatment without telling me?”
She reacted slowly, pulling herself from the goings on in the paper. Blinking at me, she asked “what do you mean?”
“Your skin. It’s magnificent and I swear you must have found some kind of miracle cream.”
She touched her face. “No… I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Greta stood and went to the downstairs bathroom, leaving me staring after her with a worried smile on my face. After a minute, I followed her and found her staring at herself in the mirror.
“I do look awfully good today, don’t I?” She turned and smiled nervously.
“You look wonderful, sweetie. Are you sure you haven’t been doing anything?” Maybe she was pulling my leg.
“I swear, I haven’t changed a thing. I guess I slept quite well, but I’ve never noticed such a difference!” I reached for her hand and she obliged, allowing me to examine her forearm up close. Again, no lines and very few freckles or spots. I looked at her hair. The gray “recruits” that had accumulated over the years were nowhere to be found. If I didn’t know better, I would have sworn this woman before me was no more than 30 years old, not 48.
“Well, let’s not ruin a good thing,” she said and pulled away from me.
She was right, I told myself. Why should I be fretting about a fortuitous turn of events? We enjoyed the morning light, our tea and paper. And made love furiously until noon.
***
Over the next few days, my attitude changed again as it became incontrovertibly clear that something very strange was going on. We were lying in bed together. I had woken before the alarm clock rattled us. The late spring early morning light was again illuminating my disturbingly attractive wife. The covers lay over her legs and most of her upper body was exposed. The stretch marks from her two pregnancies, which had been one of her vanity points, were gone. Se fueron. I could literally see no sign of her ever having been pregnant.
Her nostrils flared slightly as she breathed. They seemed to have the diaphanous pinkness one notices in young children. The slight discolorations of her skin that had accumulated over the years were gone. After getting up that morning, I insisted we see a doctor. What did we tell her? “Doctor, my wife is spontaneously growing younger!”
All the doctor could tell us was that Greta was a remarkably well-preserved and healthy woman of 48. She’d never seen someone so free from time’s woes. I thanked the doctor for her time and Greta and I returned home in silence.
***
“John, what’s happening to me?” Greta had stopped going to work because her colleagues wouldn’t leave her alone, insisting that she tell them her secret. She had no secret; she’d convinced me, but apparently not her co-workers. We were the victims of some strange natural or supernatural happening. Two weeks from the morning of my original suspicions, my wife appeared to be about 20 years old.
A week later, she appeared to be a fresh-faced 16-year-old. We sought additional medical advice. Nobody could tell us what was happening, but they all marveled and begged us to allow them to study her over time. There was no case of such a thing happening in all of Western medical history, we were assured by world-class doctors.
“I don’t know, Greta, but I do know I want to enjoy our time together.” We both feared the worst. Where would such a process lead? It seemed obvious.
Dealing with our children was the most difficult thing. Diana, 24, and James, 22 looked older than their mother. They couldn’t process what was happening. No one could.
People just don’t grow younger. They grow older. Period. Growing is, by definition, getting older. Time’s arrow is irreversible. Physics may tell us that time’s arrow could go either way, but all of human experience — and non-human experience, as far as we could tell from observing the rest of the universe — made it quite clear than in this universe time’s arrow was a one-way street. My wife would, unfortunately, beg to differ. Based on the rate of younging, we only had a few weeks before…
“Greta,” I addressed my 12-year-old wife, “I love you so much.” The tears welled in my wife’s eyes. Her memories had remained intact even as we assumed that her brain had younged along with her body. She didn’t talk much anymore. We generally just held each other or maintained some kind of physical contact. It was strange seeing my damaged skin next to her perfect pores and silken arm hairs. We slept together but didn’t have sex anymore.
The following week, Diane, James and I sat in silence with my 6-year-old wife, their 6-year-old mother. Her memories had now disappeared except for the previous few days. She knew who she was, but couldn’t comprehend what was going on. This was for the best. It was reverse Alzheimer’s.
The week after that, I woke with a baby in my bed. I held her as she cried loudly. I was all cried out.
A few days later, she was gone. I had taken a heavy dose of sleeping pills the previous few nights to ensure that I slept through the night, when it seemed most of the younging took place. In my stupor, I lay in the morning light once more with only questions for companionship.
***
“Greta,” I smiled at my wife as I relived this most peculiar dream in my mind. She lifted her eyes temporarily away from her newspaper, looking at me over her glasses, and pulled her graying hair behind her left ear.
“Yes, darling?”
“Don’t ever leave me, my beauty.”
