The Rec Room

The past and the future collide in the present in a magnificent and colorful explosion of memories and dreams. Tonight I stood downstairs in a room in this house, the house where I grew up. It is a white room now, with bare walls, fake wood floors and a wall in the middle that didn't used to be there, but I remember a time when the floor was covered with a stained brown carpet, the walls were red and I used to jump as high as I could to try to see myself in the mirror above the fireplace. I grew up in that room, played all sorts of made up games with my siblings - games like beef stew or fisherman. I received my first marriage proposal in that room. I have practiced piano, watched movies, done my chores, cried over the empty bed of the dead dog and fed my squealing guinea pig all in that room over the last two and a half decades. As I walked through that room tonight echos of the past ignited a cascade of images and emotions in my head, but as I approached the door to the hallway a different feeling entered my head and soul. Tonight, this bare, white room whispered to me not just of the past, but of my future. It seemed as though some impression of my own home, my own family, my own abundant life to come breathed life into the memories, putting them in perspective as the beloved and/or painful past. Those things that made me what I am today. The things that will enable me to become and to achieve the sweet echos of the future the linger on the senses of my soul.The past and the future collide in the present, in a spectacular and colorful explosion of memories and dreams.