Loveday Writing

You have a magic button on your shirt. Every time you twist it…**

 

At the Touch of a Button

I have a magic button on my blouse with a clock on it that is second from the top and closest to my heart. Every time I twist it, I can travel back in time.

I can twist it to go back to the mid ’60s and ’70s and reassure my Nan, father and his siblings that everything will be okay, it will just take a little while. I also take the time to get to know one of my father’s siblings, my Aunty Trish, keeping from her how little time she does have.

I can also twist it to back to the ’70s to be friends with my mum. I’ll find out whether her extensive hair and beauty routine would bother the make-up-less me, like she thought. 

I can also twist it to go back even further in time, to the ’40s and ’50s to get to know my grandmothers as young women. I’d get to know them to find out what they were like before they became my beloved Nan and Nanna and what their dreams were. Similarly, I’d do the same for my Pop (my mother’s father).

I’d twist it to go back to multiple points in my childhood to hug my Nan, Nanna and Pop more.

I’d twist it to go back five to six years ago to get a picture with my friend George and get to know him more. However I’m not sure if it would make his loss more or less painful.

I’d twist it to go back three years ago and tell my first and so far last boyfriend, that I loved him and also tell him how I felt about some aspects of our relationship.

I’d twist it to back ten years ago and tell my teenage self to watch what I eat and hoping that I listen so I don’t end up overweight in my adulthood.

I’d twist it just to go back to the ’90s and enjoy the world before everyone got a mobile phone, before social media was invented and before certain terrorists attacks happened and the world was simpler.

I’m not sure if I’d every twist it to go forward, I think that ruins the joyous and not-so joyous but necessary surprises that life and time can bring. 

 

 

**Reference: Marsden J 1998, Everything I Know About Writing, Pan Macmillan, Australia.