Scientists tell us there may be an infinite number of parallel universes, and among them every possible variation of the lives we live now, some very slightly different from the one we know, some greatly different, some even without us.[1]
They also tell us that time is relative to motion within our universe, so my time while moving is not your time while standing still, and both distance and speed increase the difference.
And so I have lived uncounted lifetimes, some that I ponder daily in this life, some that veer here or there ever so slightly and years later have carried me afar. The fork in the road is not just a metaphor.
Who doesn't wonder what if? And how much more is there to wonder at, if there is more what was and is and will be than we can reckon, and in each of those, another us, wondering the same, some happier some sadder, some hungry some full, some cold some warm, some utterly miserable some sublimely elevated.
If I could single out one timeline to enjoy today, it would lead here:
My doppelgänger would go out west with a butterball wife, two kids young enough to be cute but not old enough to know it, a station wagon big enough for all of us and a dog we left at home, and we'd stop at the Wigwam Motel on Route 66 and stay a night in a teepee-shaped lodge, then it's off to the Grand Canyon and I'm wearing Bermuda shorts with a big camera around my neck and not caring that everyone else knows we're tourists and I'd take a million pictures and when I got home have them made into slides and invite friends over and we'd drink iced tea from iced tea glasses and we'd watch the pictures on a projector and listen to an LP on the console Magnavox of authentic Hopi Indian chanting and afterward the children would sleep and women would visit in the kitchen and the men would get into the good brandy and smoke Chesterfields.
Mrs Doppelgänger would be a casserole of Hazel and Alice with a side of Birdie and scoop of Mrs Livingston, a storybook TV kitchen wife in a floured apron full of earthy wisdom and warnings and an occasional grimace that turns into a smile after 30 minutes.
I am have will taken that trip as seen from a sufficiently distant observer as interested in me as I am in him-her-it, uncounted ever so slightly different trips.
That was is will be back in the days before interstates, when a vacation cost you not a few tires, when an airplane trip was as likely as a trip to the moon, when American Indian reservations were fairytale places painted in Movietone pastels, when every husband loved every wife and child and neighbor and God and country, when tolerance was co-existence veiled by delicate misconceptions.
They weren't the good-ol' days, they were just old days lived sunrise to sunset just like we do today by folks who were mostly trying to do the right thing most of the time.
If I could single out another one tomorrow to enjoy, it would be different, and different the day after that.
Visit the Wigwam Hotel➚
[1]
The best layman's explanation of this I've seen recently is Brian Greene's Fabric of the Cosmos ➚4-part series on PBS. The book is here ➚
Also very good, and one of my favorite authors to listen to in audio books, Michio Kaku's Parallel Worlds➚
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