Entertaining question to kick around today.
If you could rewind your life to any age or year and relive it, what would it be?
I’ll go first. (Mine might have something to do with rewinding back to public civility and party lines…)
But, I digress.
When I was 10, I got to do two things I’ll never forget. If I could go back, I would in a heartbeat.
I got my first real bike. My dad gave it to me by riding it out of one of the bays at the service station he owned at the time.
Picture big guy riding small blue girl’s bike. Priceless memory.
The second thing we did was visit the Space Needle for the first time. My parents had a birthday tradition back in the day. They didn’t have a lot of money, but on your day, the birthday boy or girl got to pick the place for dinner.
Yours truly picked the Space Needle. (The Space Needle was only ~two years old in 1964.)
You should’ve seen their faces when I announced that’s where I wanted to go. But, it was tradition, so we all piled in the car on my birthday and drove the 150 miles to Seattle. We rode to the top, and had steak dinners—all five of us, plus one on the way.
Another precious memory I’d like to relive, more so now since there’s only two of us left.
Okay, Killzoners, your turn. What does your Life Rewound look like?
***
How would you live today if you knew you had no tomorrows left?
Follow Annie Lee as she navigates what she believes is her last day on earth.
Walk in her shoes . . . and ask yourself the same question. Will your answer be the same one Annie discovers?
I mis-read your question at first thinking in terms of if you could go back in life and re-do something—I think because that is always on my mind. If I were able to re-do something in life, knowing what I know now, I passionately, desperately wish I had gone to school to become a physical therapist. Older adults need help with all the stuff nobody prepares you for as you age (not even if you’re a physically active older adult).
But to answer what you DID ask:
“If you could rewind your life to any age or year and relive it, what would it be?”
Without question my answer would be the day in 1997 when my childhood dreams of moving west were realized. As a child who grew up watching westerns and seeing all those breathtaking mountain ranges and awesome landscapes, I never wanted anything more than to move west to live near the mountains. Growing up in flat & featureless Maryland, I was desperate to “Go West, Young Girl.” 😎
It took till I was in my 30’s, and I didn’t initially know which western state I would move to, but Arizona turned out to be my home and I LOVE LOVE LOVE it. Even now during a heat wave when all my fellow Arizonans are whining because of the 100+ degree weather.
And I get to see mountains EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. I have been so blessed.
The summer of ’72. I went to the beach often with my best friend Randy. I still associate the drive with Carol King’s song “It’s Too Late” on the radio. Her album Tapestry was a sensation that summer. I was going to be in college in the fall, Randy had one more year of high school, and unbeknownst to both of us this would be our last summer together. I wrote about that here.
Depends. Would I need to relive the years following that time? If so, I wouldn’t go back. If I could pop in and out, it’d probably be the summer of ‘91, when I met the love of my life (the only man I should’ve married but didn’t) and began a new chapter filled with excitement, passion, and sheer bliss. Strangely, it was also the summer I started writing. We wrote children’s books together.
Summer 1979. I was in Israel for a month. I traveled from Sharm El Sheikh in the south to the Syrian border in the north. I soaked in an oasis at Ein Gedi that Kind David liked. Climbed Masada. Spent an afternoon on a beach in Gaza. Walked on the Temple Mount around the Dome of the Rock. I was 16.
Very special memory: Before dawn we hiked the path to the top of Jabba Musa. We had to be at the top before sunrise. At dawn we started Shacharit, the morning prayers. One of the girls in our group read from the Torah for her Bat Mitzvah. She read Exodus 20, The Ten Commandments, Jabba Musa is known at Mt. Sainai in English.
Memory I would like to forget. I spent a week on a Kibbutz, Nir Oz. I worked in the fields each day. The road ran along the field. The other side of the road was the security zone. The Army patrol came by each morning. At sunrise I could hear the call to prayer from the mosque in Gaza City, on the other side of the fence.
On October 7, 2023, Nir Oz had a population of 450. On October 8, 190.