Time travelers shouldn’t marry, my father had told me forty years ago in this time line. But if they married, they should make sure it wasn’t to another time traveler.
As I flew into Colorado Springs in the morning, my hands so tight on the wheel of the flyer that my knuckles shone white through the skin, I sighed. The last ten years had taught me the truth of this, but the warnings were all for nothing. Who should time agents marry but other time agents? Who else could you marry on Christmas day 1943, when you were both 25, then retire with in 2202 when you were sixty? To whom else could you talk about that wonderful chick pea pie you ate on New Year’s probably 1231 somewhere in the French countryside? Who else would smile at you at reminiscences of Pompeii before the volcano? Who else would nod when you sighed about the beauties of European art before 2070? Who would even believe you’d traveled through time and seen all of that?
It was snowing lightly and the re-constructed downtown looked like a jewel under morning sun: self-consciously prim — if utterly false — Victorians gleaming under newly fallen snow. From this far up, it was impossible to tell if people walked the streets. Flyers were forbidden in the heart of downtown, and ground cars weren’t moving yet. It was too early for the people who agreed to believe in the living reconstruction to be moving.
But I could see the sudden flashes in Pikes Peak, and the ships rising, so the spaceport was working. To be fair, it worked night and day, twenty four hours, seven days, twelve months. So why would it not be sending ships to far distant colonies two days before Christmas at six am.
My destination was less lofty and more disquieting. Cheyenne Mountain had been decommissioned and recommissioned many times before I was born, mid-twenty second century. The last commissioning had been quiet, almost silent. The public knew there was a “scientific facility” under the mountain, but that was it. My parents had known better, since they’d both at one time been time agents.
(Removed because book — Christmas in Time — will be available for sale on Amazon 12-14-2025)
According To Hoyt 
This made me cry.
My mom can’t remember her grandkids or her kids’ birthdays or ages. She can recall how to text me every stupid fake cryptid/UFO video on YouTube, though. I figure I’ve got maybe ten years before I lose the plot, myself.
Dementia seems to be the cruelest form of time travel there is, and here you’ve gone and flipped the script. I needed this.
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one of the running cadences we sang had the line
“Once a man, and twice a child.”
Part of me would very much like to see this world again as I did as a child.
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Very nice.
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Wonderful, Sarah. The Reader thanks you.
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Isn’t way too late in the year for there to still be pollen in the air? I would have thought so, but my allergies are acting up something fierce. Eyes are watering to the point I can barely see the screen.
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Aaaaand….. it’s dusty in here.
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It must be the smoke from the slash piles I burned today. Gotta be.
Thanks, Sarah!
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So beautiful.
Thank you!
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Time changes us all. We need to remember to be thankful.
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Very good Sarah.
Oh, Mom had Dementia before her death and it was terrible.
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My uncle could not recognize his own children or what was happening at his wife’s funeral.
My father had moments of confusion but also knew where he was and who people were to the end.
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Mine too; terrible is an understatement…
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Beautiful. Thank-you.
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Very nice!
Got a kick out of “exited longitudinally in various dishonorable ways”!
My BIL and his sister lost their mother to dementia after their dad died. She really never got to know their grandchildren. She’s been gone now a few years.
We have a friend who lost his wife to early onset alzheimer’s, she was in her early 60’s. We got to watch the early part, but we weren’t seeing them much so it was us going “Um? Do we say something?” Really sad. At least there she had family looking out for her, as well as him. Her dad had the early onset alzheimer’s. Double blow for her mother and siblings to watch her. Not to mention her children because in her case appears to be inherited (not a guaranty, her mom and her siblings haven’t been afflicted, her older sister doesn’t appear to be, yet).
Mom has a friend who is going through dementia now. She’s early to mid-80’s (I think). Problem is, family is not local. No one here has the legal authority to step in. All anyone can do is watch for any signs that someone might take advantage of her. Plus be patient when she repeats things, requests something multiple times, or we repeatably remind her of events. In addition she tends to travel on her own. Can’t stop her. What we can do (we, as in sisters and I) is forbid mom to ride with her. Even mom drives, or they go separate (or for a few things, I drive). The other sad detail is she is being excluded from certain overnight events (these are other elderly people) no one wants the responsibility she’d require.
It is scary. I seem to forget names I should know (to be fair, always have, but …) then there are words that I should be able to grasp but can’t. Not just spelling. So far the internet and google are my best buddies. Also, not new. Always have changed sentence structure because the “word” I thought I wanted just wasn’t there or the spelling wasn’t. Still the very concept is scary. I’d never have come up with “exited longitudinally”, ever. Appreciate the combination. Use it without the example? Not a chance.
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I think this story could teach Hallmark Movie script writers more than a bit about how to approach their stories.
Of course they’d never learn the right lessons, so I guess we’ll have to be (very, extremely, wonderfully) satisfied with what The Hostess serves us.
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My godmother has advanced dementia. She doesn’t know anyone’s name or where she is. She knows she knows you though and that you are special to her. And she can still say a rosary. Dementia is like that.
She is still one of the sweetest people who has ever lived. I will miss her terribly. And she currently in hospice and only getting palliative care. For her children’s sake I’d hope she wouldn’t go over Christmas, but there isn’t really a great time for it. Not really.
Loved the story. Thank you. I needed a good cry.
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Years ago, we were at a small church in Georgia which was having Homecoming. (It’s an annual birthday party for the church). There was an elderly lady in the pew in front of me who was in her own world; a younger woman was with her. At the Passing of the Peace, everyone was up and milling around except this lady and I didn’t want her to be left out, so I reached over, touched her shoulder and said something like, “God bless you.”
And she reached up, covered my hand with hers and said, quite clearly, “And I love you, too.”
I lost it, right there in church. Am choking up now, remembering.
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Many years ago we were in church, and there was a man who always sat in the back row, usually with no one nearer than a few rows in front of him. (It was a small parish.) At one point Sharon deliberately left our pew to go back and greet him at the kiss of peace. When the liturgy ended, he explained that he had Alzheimers and was self-isolating from fear of embarrassment that he might not recognize someone he had known for years. After that Sunday, he moved up to sit with the rest of the congregation.
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I know. It was both a relief and a tragedy when BIL lost his mother. She was well past recognizing either of her children, let alone their spouses and the grandchildren. Her husband had been gone for nearly 20 years.
Regarding losing a grandparent Christmas? Lost paternal grandmother sometime between when she went to bed Christmas day, Dec. 25, 1987 and the morning of Dec. 26, 1987. Went to sleep, never woke up. No warning. No dementia. No known illnesses. She was 79, only 3 months short of 80. It was a bit of a shock, despite her age. OTOH she was where someone would find her with no delay (she lived alone).
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No, there’s no good time, but sometimes they pick their own time. My mom died the day before I came back from vacation with my father’s family (he’d died about two years earlier). I’m convinced Mom timed it that way on purpose. Before we left home, I’d visited her and told her where we were going and when we’d be back. And mom managed to time things for the morning before we flew home.
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Thinking about “timing”, several decades ago we were coming back from an out-of-town trip and Dad decided that he should visit his mother who in a nursing-home (she still had her mind).
After we visited her and got home, my Uncle (Dad’s brother) called to say that grandmother Howard had just died.
Dad was glad he had taken the time to visit with her.
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I visited my father in the hospital the day before he died. Or rather, my mother, who was with him. He showed no signs of being aware I was there. Only that he was wearing booties and mittens and didn’t like them. He was trying to take them off. If he had succeeded, he would have gone for the IV.
On the other hand, my younger sister tried to make one last visit, and my mother got the text that she was on the road, and moments later, he died. My older sister and I went down to intercept her in the lobby so that she wouldn’t get the news registering at the desk. (Mom didn’t want to call her while she was driving.)
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Written this before on this blog. We got the call that FIL had been rushed to the hospital (before cell phones and BIL called just as I knew hubby was off work and headed home or I’d called the work phone). BIL said “come yesterday” (essentially). This was months after that “last” major heart attack in November that FIL wasn’t expected to survive, let alone come home for Thanksgiving, which he did. Also why we told them we were pregnant, finally again, before we’d planned. Or why am I there “sick” repeatably while FIL just came home from the hospital. Hubby telling his nurse sister, and retired nurse mother, that it “was not catching” (hey we were desperate enough that we wished pregnancy could be, it’s not) might have clued them in. Then when we got that call from BIL early May, it was not a surprise, but still a shock. By then we were sure he’d last to see that grand-baby born, on shear stubbornness. FIL died 6 weeks shy. Hubby did not make it in time, but he swears he straightened a few curbs on Hwy 126/20 between Eugene and Bend trying. (Hubby was not willing to try and make it with me and baby on board. I didn’t go.)
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Magnificent! This is what “you can trust the author” or “Human Wave” fiction looks like, feels like.
You can’t predict “the happy” ending, or know for sure that there’ll be one. But there is going to be “a” happy, or otherwise satisfying, ending. The story will, as they say (in math and suchlike places), “close” properly. High-trust, low-risk (for the reader) storytelling — check.
A Thanksgiving / Christmas blessing for us all, indeed.
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Very nice, Sarah. Thank you!
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Onion ninjas twice. Once at the ending. Once at the statue.
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You think it will be impossible to fix it and the writer says “hold my beer”.
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Awesome story. Thank you.
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Great story. I lost my mom to Alzheimer’s. She fought for ten years. She didn’t remember me for almost nine and a half of those years. She always remembered my dad, but after he died, she went downhill even more rapidly. It’s a horrifying way to go.
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Great story, really touched my heart….. Have read it twice now and there must be a lot of dust in the air today. Thank you Sarah……
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Dad had a different type of dementia. He lost impulse control and the ability to judge consequences. Executive disfunction, I suppose.
Like turning off the car on the freeway, or crossing the road into oncoming traffic.
He knew us right to the end, which is a blessing.
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MIL, last 6 years of her life. She’d had a brain *aneurysm (shallow) burst. Her personality changed, her control changed. What was sad was she was aware to some extent.
(*) They were home, still living on the Little Dechutes next to La Pine State Park, south of Sunriver/Bend. She’d grabbed her head, collapsed in their kitchen, FIL called 911, then called a neighbor who was a retired nurse like MIL. CPR until paramedics arrived from Sunriver (La Pine didn’t have them then) somewhere around 30 to 45 minutes later. Bend hospital, emergency Hail Mary surgery. FIL acted as a buffer for the first 3 years until his major (second one after 23 years) heart attack. It was the subsequent 3 years that hubby, his siblings, and the inlaws (like me), learned how much FIL had been covering for her. Distance sheltered hubby and I from even more. Being pregnant and then with a newborn/infant/toddler stages before she died had me protected even more (by hubby, and his siblings). Not everything. Then it was my responsibility to protect our toddler. (“Absolutely I am not handing off a danger stranger screaming toddler to you just because you want to hold him.” Might have been muttered outside her room after the start of one of our monthly visits to her nursing home room. She did get to hold him later that visit. On his terms. Don’t believe in arguing with hysterical toddlers. I’d lose, every single time. Taking him away was not giving in.)
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My father lost track of time. He’d get up and say he had to drive to a doctor’s appointment years after he had to stop driving, and with no appointment. Fortunately, he could read the calendar with no appointments.
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frontal lobe dementia, yes.
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Sorry, I was at LosCon when you posted this one and just now got around to reading it. Such a sweet story. As to the scene when Ilario saw Anya in the Springs, something I told my wife many times and have told other women, “When a man looks at the woman he loves, he always sees the woman he fell in love with, not the one she sees in the mirror.” Of course when a man looks in the mirror, he sees the young vigorous 25 year old he used to be, not the balding overweight guy he should be seeing. :)
With Sharon gone and no progeny to worry about, I don’t care when I go to join her. I just worry that I’ll end up with dementia before I go. One big blessing was that Sharon was sharp as a ninja’s dagger to the very end.
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Frank, that (“when a man…”) is just perfect. I saved it, and sent it to my wife.
I loved the description of the Heinlein statue. It made me misremember a quote from the Notebooks of Lazarus Long (“little girls and kittens need no excuse” — actually, it was “butterflies”. But that’s ok…)
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The “when a man” comment is true, and women don’t realize it. Of course you have to tell them a lot or they’ll stop believing it.
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Yes, I immediately recognized it as true. And yes, she has trouble believing it, partly because she’s a number of years older than I am.
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Thank you for the story and the perfectly satisfactory twist at the end.
(Although, to this blog-follower, it reads like a slightly fictionalized memoir of the author!)
And thanks to others for their stories of dealing with family members who have fallen into the clutches of Dementia and all her siblings.
None of our 4 parents (mine and GrandpaAesop’s) and only one of our grandparents (of 8) had any dementia before they passed, which is a genuine blessing, although the last gramma was getting forgetful of minor details before she passed at age 93.
However, my older sister (75 to my 73) started slipping last fall, and is about half-way to the bottom of the valley. She know us and her friends, can tell stories of the Good Old Days just fine, and remembers things if drilled into her, but the simple memories of what you said 5 minutes ago, or what she did yesterday, are pretty much gone.
The rest of us (3 total) are trading off going to be with her for doctors’ appointments, but she is very restricted in what she can do on her own now. Can make it to grocery and hair dresser, which is the most important thing! Plans are afoot to move her to a care home near one of us, as soon as possible.
The saddest thing is that all her close friends are also either in much the same condition, have moved to be close to their families, or have passed away. She doesn’t have a church family or any close association with younger people, such as I am counting on when we get “really old” and need friends who can lend a hand.
The wife of one of my cousins went into early dementia in her early sixties, and lived at least 10 years more, totally unable to recognize her husband and only child, and with no impulse control in public. She had been a librarian, intelligent, well-read and fun to visit.
The declining brain takes its toll of everyone without fear or favor.
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