Time travel and destiny

I just finished a very lovely book.
I really love to read and I am very picky about what I choose to spend my time reading. I went through a phase for many, many years that I would only read authors that I had read before and enjoyed. Lucky for me, two of those authors were Stephen King and Dean Koontz, who both manage to produce books on a regular basis. I spent a long time switching between the two of them filling my brain with lots of pleasant stories about rape, murder, serial killers, and imaginary twin brothers who died in utero but remained to torture a suburban dad. You know, upbeat stuff. Occasionally I would throw in a John Grisham novel just as brain crack.

Then I began to have children.
That was when my reading selections switched from those of horror and terror to diaper rashes and attachment parenting.
A couple of years ago I switched back to reading for pleasure and have tried to force myself to read outside of my typical genres and try something new, (well except romance novels, I don't think I could bring myself; is that even a genre?)

So when I go to Costco to make my weekly $100.00 deposit, along with the toilet paper, milk, bread, and cereal buying; I always check out the book section. I like to buy books at Costco because they are cheap, cheap, cheap; and I HAVE to buy books because I am NOT a library person. Not that I have anything against the library; they are great places and do a lot of great things for, you know, literacy and everything.

The thing about the library that I am unable to comply to is the fact that they have DUE DATES on the books that you check out. And if, by chance, you happen to "forget" the due date, or "forget" that you even have the book(s) from the local public library, when you finally DO figure it out and return them, (oh, sometimes, months later,) they charge you LATE FEES. By the time I pay the LATE FEE, I may as well have just bought the damn book at Costco.

Costco has a lot of books, from lot of genres, (I'm sure they probably even have romance novels,) and I enjoy browsing the book selection looking for something that's not about murder and mayhem, and not about rape and incest, but IS something I would be interested in reading. One day I came across a book that looked quite good; I was drawn to it because it reminded me of one of my favorite Dean Koontz, Lightning. The title of this, just finished book is The Time Travelers Wife by Audrey Niffenegger.

The book Lightning, is about a time traveler from Nazi Germany in the 1940's. The Nazi's had built a time machine that could only go forward in time which they used to figure out the mistakes that they made in losing the war so not to repeat the same mistakes. One of the time travelers on one of his trips to the future falls in love with a woman he sees signing books at a book store. He checks in on her in different times of her life (all which are in the future for him,) and makes changes to somehow better her circumstances. Inevitably though, he learns that nothing can change destiny and everything that is meant to happen will happen; and that true love withstands all time, space, and realities.

In The Time Travelers Wife, one of the two main characters, Henry, is a time traveler. Now Henry doesn't need a machine because he has a genetic (dis)order that causes him to spontaneously time travel to either the past or the future. When he time travels, he goes to another time without anything (including his clothing,) and returns to his present the same way. Unlike the time traveling character in Lightning, Henry is able to be with "himself" in other times, ie. Henry of the present can hang out with Henry of the past or future. Henry has no control of where he time travels or how long he stays. But like the time traveling character in Lightning, Henry also learns that nothing can change destiny and everything that is meant to happen will happen; and that true love withstands all time, space, and realities.

The book was wonderful, extremely well written for a first novel, and quite deep and thought provoking. It made me think about all of the choices that we make in our lives not sure that they are the right ones or not. We travel through our own time, and other people's time impacting them on so many levels without even realizing it. What if we would have turned left instead of right on the road of life? What if we would have stopped and helped someone in need that we ignored? What if we had taken that chance that was a huge risk, but didn't, how would our lives been different today?

I like to think about what I would do if I could time travel. What would I say to myself of, say 1987, the year I graduated from High School? Would I tell her to apply herself better in school, don't date that one guy that would break her heart, don't get married to that other guy who turned out to be a complete ass (XH #1,) don't spend so much money? What would I say?

Would I really want to change ANYTHING? Isn't everything that has happened in my life, painful as some of it has been, MADE me who I am? Now some people might say, "Recovering Straight Girl, why would you WANT to be who you are; a narcissitic divorced lesbian, with a former lovely but confused girlfriend, who waits tables on the weekends?"

Well, I don't really know who else I would be. I am just me and I AM living my life, (sucky as it may sometimes be,) and I am living it to the fullest and best that I can possibly do.

So what would I say to myself in 1987? I would probably just tell myself to buy stock in Microsoft, Starbucks, and Nike at the appropriate time, but otherwise just live life and enjoy the ride. Everything else will be as it's meant to be.