The Joy of Time Travel

Shivering in the rain and trying to maneuver through the heavy mist last weekend, I began to search my memory for another Memorial Day when the weather was as dreary. I recalled traveling to New Hampshire from New York City for Thanksgiving one year without wearing a coat because of the unseasonably warm temperatures in late November. I could easily recall driving to New Hampshire in dreadful snow and ice storms determined to make it home for the Christmas holidays. I have no memory of a dismal Memorial Day weekend.

Perhaps because I have recently finished reading Octavia E. Butler’s novel Kindred, I had time travel on my mind. The novel was published in 1979 and explores the relations and dilemmas of antebellum slavery from the perspective of a twentieth-century African American woman who travels through time back and forth from her home in Los Angeles, California (1976) to a pre-Civil War Maryland plantation. If you haven’t read Kindred, I recommend it for your summer reading, along with Octavia Butler’s other novels and stories.

What I remember about Memorial Day is our gatherings at Merrymeeting Lake when Uncle Jim and Aunt Barbara would host my mother’s family at their lakeside cottage. The highlight was a parade around the cottage with various cousins carrying American flags, singing, banging on pots and pans and taking joy in being together.

Although they are definitely not Memorial Day memories, I do recall being at the Merrymeeting cottage, with my cousin Sally, on rainy days. We loved those occasions. The day began with hot muffins, pulled from the oven, that we spread with butter and jam. We would sit at the table wrapped in warm bathrobes and look out across the lake, almost hidden in the thick mist. A Japanese landscape.

When everyone was dressed, Aunt Barbie would pull out the stack of games that were piled on the back edge of the stone fireplace in the bedroom. We would spend hours playing one game or another in front of a roaring fire that kept the cottage dry and warm. If the rain stopped, we would quickly pull on another layer of clothing, and slickers, for a walk around “the dingle”. In the evening Uncle Jim would read to us or we would encourage Aunt Barbie to tell us stories of growing up on a farm. It was a magical time.

My plans for Memorial Day weekend had to be abandoned because of the weather. Without piles of games, Aunt Barbie’s homemade muffins or a window that looked out across a mist covered lake what to do? It was too late for a trip to France, but not too late to make plans for dinner at JFK Airport in the Paris Café.

The landmarked, and architecturally stunning TWA airport facility designed by Eero Saarinen in 1962, has been reimagined as a first-class hotel. The historic building, interior and exterior, much like the Colonial Theater, has been restored to how it looked when it opened. There is even an exhibition of the uniforms flight attendants wore from 1944 when the airline began flying until TWA was acquired by American Airlines when it went into bankruptcy. The interior of the TWA Hotel includes the modern Knoll furniture that was in place when it opened.

After spending the afternoon with a friend at the Whitney Museum we boarded the A train to Jamaica, Queens, disembarked and bought tickets for the Train to the Plane which delivered us just at the edge of Terminal Five and the TWA Hotel.

The bright red carpeting and the soaring glass walls that suggest flight, immediately removed any thought of the weather. Music, the crooning sounds of Frank Sinatra, the Beatles early hits, the Beach Boys, all from the 1960’s, immediately brought smiles and it was difficult not to think about dancing. One had the sense of traveling back through time. There it was.

Now, when you are reading this, I hope to be sitting on at a beach on Lake Winnisquam with a book and glass of iced tea. As I begin to plan for summer in New Hampshire I’m already tasting fresh vegetables, imaging early morning canoe trips and looking out across fields filled with wildflowers.

It was fun having dinner at the Paris Café in the TWA Hotel on a cold, rainy night and time traveling back to the sixties. Of course, it just can’t compare with an afternoon in New Hampshire when the sky is summer blue, the sun in golden and a light breeze is blowing through the trees.