time travel and other means of locomotion

Today I realized I have misplaced my debit card again. I think this may be the third time this year that I have had to report it lost. My brain has been functioning in a different time zone lately.

To keep track of debit cards, where you are on the freeway, what you wanted to purchase at the grocery store you need to keep yourself in the present. I have been bopping this week between the sweet memories of the past and the unrealized fears for the future.

On Monday I brought in pictures of glaciers, icebergs, and wild-crazy adventure to show some third graders who have no knowledge of the world beyond the hot dry of south-central Arizona. The pictures were in an album filled with three consecutive years of adventures... a month spent in central Mexico learning the language and culture, fourteen days rafting the Alsek River in the Yukon and Alaska, ten days sea kayaking and rafting in Costa Rica. I guess I have not looked at these pictures in years, and I was awash with longing for the camaraderie of fellow travelers that great adventures affords. Since Costa Rica, I have been to Idaho numerous times, to Glacier Park and Yellowstone. I saw the sun set behind the Grand Tetons as I dropped down into Jackson, WY and do not think I have seen anything more beautiful. I have been to Europe a couple of times, to France with my sister and to enchanting Switzerland to visit my beautiful daughter... and these were all wonderful adventures in their own way, but this week as I looked back at the wildness of class four rapids, ice-cold wind and deadly cold water, I remembered only the vastness and the awe it inspired in me. I wanted to do it again. I wanted to feel that kind of alive and so for much of the week as I went through the motions of life, I felt the river under me and the cold snap of the wind on my face.

At the end of the week, still riding the river, I visited my parents to check up on them. As we talked about their week and mine, I noticed a couple hot air balloons in the sky and pointed them out. My mom said that balloons were often in the sky in that direction, but my dad said he could not see them. He then told me he could hardly read anymore. I asked him about driving and he said that yes he was still driving, but he preferred the freeways to the surface streets, because he did not have to worry about pedestrians. He has cataracts and a surgery scheduled for mid-March... but the doctors have been preparing him for complications... so things may not turn out as we hope.

So from the wild freedom of the river, my mind flipped to the dark prison of fruitless worry over a future I have no control over.

The easy part, you know, will be taking the keys away.

I lost my debit card again. I had it. I can remember having it, using it, yesterday. I remember putting it away. But now it is gone. And the only thing I can think, is that I was somewhere else when it left me... that my brain, my head, my heart was walking about while my hands were moving.