Later Thank You Think

When I was a young man, I fell in love with a girl, and we got married.

I came home from work one day, and my wife led me to our bedroom. There, at the foot of our bed, was a crib.

Cuddled inside was a baby boy, wrapped in a fuzzy blue blanket.

We held our son and danced and cried, and the three of us fell asleep.

When I awoke in the morning, I was in a different house, and I found my wife in the living room teaching our child to walk.

I kissed them goodbye and went to work, and when I returned that night, my son and I played catch until the sun went down.

The next day, my car wouldn’t start, so my boy drove me to work before school. When I left the office that evening, I took the bus to another town, to visit my son in college.

My wife was there waiting for me, and we rode home together.

Our son called before we went to sleep and said that he might visit soon — maybe for Thanksgiving if he could get time off from his job.

I hung up and heard someone weeping in the living room. There, I found my wife looking at a worn picture of an adorable infant wrapped in blue.

It was then that I remembered the baby in our bedroom, and I ran to the back of the house to retrieve our bundle of joy.

I flung open the door and something twinkled in the darkness, and I hoped it was time rolling back.

But when I looked again, it was gone.