Sunshine

The end of the old woman’s life was very near. She could feel it. Her breathing came in slow, uneven waves. She heard the beeping of machines keeping her comfortable and the faint hum of voices outside the door. Flowers sat on a table across the room. They were beautiful but impersonal — a kindness from strangers given to a woman who had the misfortune of outliving everyone she loved.

She closed her eyes and wondered. Could she do it? One last time? She was ready to die, but she wished for one last visit. One last memory.

She had to try.

Slowly, faintly at first and then all at once, glimmers of soft red light came through and began collecting, coming together to illuminate a complete picture. A room came into view. Not the room she was currently in, bright and cold and austere. No. This room was dark and warm. Soft shadows covered the walls and the sound of white noise steadily grew in her ears, like coming up out of water.

She felt the familiar settling into a different version of her body. This one was younger and stronger, but tired and sore in places she hadn’t felt in a long time. The settling was always awkward, like finding just the right position in which to fall asleep. But as she settled into her body, she became aware of another body, the one she’d come back for.

Little puffs of breath landed on her arm. His blonde hair tickled her chin. As she eased into this body, she felt the full weight of his on her chest, his legs draped around her, his hand resting on her shoulder. He was asleep. Smell was always the last sense to fall in place, and as it did she inhaled deeply. She’d forgotten, although she tried not to, the exact scent of his shampoo, his lotion, his essence. He smelled like sunshine. She softly rubbed his back, careful not to wake him and undo the effort this younger version of herself had gone through to get him to this peaceful place.

She didn’t know when exactly she was. He was a toddler, around the age of two. From how she was dressed, she guessed it was spring. She looked around the small room, taking in all the little details that faded from memory with time. His favorite book beside her, next to the chair they sat reading and cuddling before sleep. The exact green of the curtains. The pictures on the wall. His favorite toys strewn across the floor.

He shifted slightly, tilting his head so she could now see his sleeping face. How she missed him. All versions of him she’d been lucky enough to know. But this version of him held a special place. His round, ruddy cheeks, long eyelashes, slightly parted lips letting warm, sleepy breathe out slowly and steadily. She moved hair from his eyes, her fingertips brushing his soft skin. She could watch him sleep all night, count his eyelashes and memorize his breathing, but she knew she didn’t have that much time.

Her root body — the one she came from — still lay quietly in a hospital bed. To an outside observer, she would simply look as though she were daydreaming. If they wanted to approach her, they’d suddenly get distracted by something else. She never understood how or why it worked like that. Often, when she’d turned to address someone only to find them gazing, unseeing, she wondered if they were somewhere else too. Though she’d never known anyone who could slide like her.

When it first happened, she thought she was time traveling. She was thirteen. Her parents were having a particularly loud argument. She’d felt her gaze drift, her body relax, and suddenly the room was changing. She no longer sat alone in the living room of her house — she was beside her best friend, laying on the floor of her room. She’d recalled this happening just a few days before. As she settled for the first time, she felt itchy and uncomfortable. But in this memory she’d reinhabited, they were laughing. The kind of laughter that made your stomach hurt. Despite the rough settling, she found herself flooded with happiness. After a few moments, she came back to her root body, her parents still fighting in the next room, the happiness leaving her body like water down a drain.

Over time, she got better at controlling it. At first she could only reinhabit recent memories, but she got better at that too. She realized that it wasn’t exactly time travel. It was more like memory travel. She could recall a memory so vividly that she slid into it wholly, her senses from the moment coming back so sharply that she was there while her root body remained somewhere else.

At twenty-two, she met her husband. After their first date, she slid into the memory so many times she worried she would blur it, like fingers smudging a beloved photo. He was funny and warm and curious. He kissed her for the first time that night, suddenly and sweetly, and she knew then that she would slide into that moment for the rest of her life.

Sometimes she would slide accidentally, usually into a memory she didn’t particularly want to feel again. Like the weeks after she experienced her miscarriage. When that slide happened, it felt like the floor she stood on was being turned upside down. She fell into those memories more than slid and was forced to feel them until she could shake it off and return to her root body.

After the birth of her son, she found it harder to slide, even when she wanted to. Her body and her mind were busy and exhausted. With time though, and through her son’s early years, she would slide every so often, usually into memories of him as a baby. Happy moments holding his little body, hearing him coo, watching his first steps. She’d slide into the moments in the early days of parenthood, when she and her husband finally crawled back to bed after getting the baby to sleep, curling into the safety and warmth of each other and letting exhaustion take over.

On long nights when the moon was high and the house was dark and her son would only sleep in her arms, she slid into memories of other long nights, dancing with her friends, music blaring, feet aching, chest alight with joyful abandon. When nerves got the best of her and she couldn’t shake them, she’d slide to a memory of summer trips to the lake, feeling cool water envelop her, sound muffled and sun blazing on her face.

Back in this room, with her two-year-old son in her arms, she felt her root body faltering, the edges of her vision warping. Just a little longer. A light turned on outside his room, a soft white glow creeping in around the closed door. Her husband. She listened for a moment, trying to interpret his sounds and decipher what he was doing. She heard a faint tinkling, the microwave door opening, beeps. He was making her popcorn. Now the pop of a cork. And pouring her wine. It must be a weekend night. They were probably about to watch a movie. She could feel that in a few moments, she would stand up, kiss her son’s cheek, and lay him gently in his crib. The intention was there in her younger body.

She wished she’d slid into a memory where her husband had poked his head in the room so she could see his face one last time. She wished she could stay in this memory long enough to go to the living room and sit beside him. But that took energy she didn’t have in her root body’s old age.

It was time to go.

She kissed her son’s warm cheek and lay him down as the edges of her vision started to blur and the bright light where her root body lay started to push in. Before she was ready, she was back. All the aches and pains returned and she felt weaker than she had a moment ago. She looked down at her wrinkled hands, the same ones that had cooked meals, brushed tears away, held her friends, caressed her loved ones, and laid them beside her. Any moment now someone would enter — a nurse, probably — to check on her, take her vitals, make sure she was comfortable.

She closed her eyes and tried to remember as many details as she could from the memory she’d just left. She inhaled as deeply as she could and smiled faintly.

Sunshine.