A Woman of Her Times, Part Ii

...It was no life she’d imagined, but she had no other real choice, and she did grow to care for him, gave him ten little girls and boys. Decades went by and she grew old, little grandchildren came along, and one day she took them to church, they lifted their voices in song. She closed her eyes to sing the hymn, but then, when she reopened them, the churck was in ruins around her, she was in the present again. In panic Holly staggered outside, and saw her husband standing there, would heaven recognize her in her fifties with silver hair? She stumbled forwards to meet him, said, “Martin, it had been so long…” He raised an eyebrow and said, “What? I don’t understand, were you gone?” She could not comprehend at first, until she looked down at her hands, saw no wrinkles, no wear and tear, just the skin of a young woman! And when she saw he young daughter, she struggled to know what to say, she’d gone back and lived thirty years, but hadn’t aged a single day?! It was the same time she had left, all had happened in moments of time, she was twenty-eighty years old again, had all of this been in her mind? For months after she thought of this, convinced she was going insane, but the memories of that life were utterly real in her brain. Was this some sort of past life thing? Or some time-travel quantam deal? How could you make up a whole life that you could remember and feel? The brain could do lots of weird stuff, and what she had ‘lived’ was absurd, to prove this all she decided to go see the old church records. The oldest did go back that far, and she figured that a quick look would prove none of this had happened… until she saw their names in the book! Every child that she had born, and the farmer that she had web, even her own name and the date that she was presumed to be dead! But what could she do with this news, what person would believe her tale? She thought often on this question, but she did so to no avail. There was no answer that made sense, so she tried to push to it away, until she went to a coffee shop, and walked out to Victorian days… It has been fifteen years since then, all the lives and families she’s had, my mother trusts me with all this, but she had never told my dad. I know because she introduced a brother born in World War II, that old mad had tears in his eyes seeing his mom in the bloom of youth... CONCLUDES IN PART III.