“Your mother mentioned that you were hiding your new wedding dress from everyone and that only my mother knows what you are up to.” His lop-sided grin slid across his face mischievously.
“I want it to be a surprise.” I raised my eyebrows and wrinkled my nose at him.
A short laughed escaped from his chest. “Somehow I am not surprised by that. I hope you do realize that even though the barrier is not completely down, some of your personality traits from your other world are starting to shine through into this one.”
“Really? How so?”
“You are becoming much more independent and forthright in your opinions and actions.”
“Is that a good thing?” I asked, curious as to whether it was disappointing to him to see me behave in such a manner, even though I felt like it was natural of me to act this way despite the fact that I was fully aware that a year ago I never would have taken such initiatives.
“It is a wonderful thing. I like you like this,” he laughed at my hesitation.
“Good, I am glad.” Relief flooded over me.
“I have some good news for you,” his mischievous grin returned.
“And what is that? Cause you know, I am not sure how many more surprises I can take in such a short amount of time,” I teased, but honestly it was true.
“Shane, your other father, has agreed to let us get married next summer,” he leaned in close and whispered in my ear.
“Okay.” I looked at him with my eyebrows crinkled unsure as to why that was such a big deal.
Did my other father not approve of my relationship with him or something?
“Jocelyn, this is wonderful news! We have been hiding the fact that we are getting married from your family because well, typically people do not get married this young there and we knew that your parents were going to be very unhappy about it.”
“Really? Why is that?”
“Because of college and grad school.”
“Yes, but I am still going to college and grad school. Right?”
“Of course, but you see, your mother is very strong minded in that you complete your education before you ever get seriously involved with someone, let alone get married, and she is terrified that getting married so young will ruin your life.”
“But that is silly. How could marriage ruin my life?”
“People do not typically get married at eighteen in the twenty-first century. Especially people who plan to continue their education. The divorce rate is around sixty percent and is even higher for those who get married at a young age,” he tried to explain.
“Sixty percent! How is that possible? Do people not believe in the commitment and sanctity of marriage anymore?”
“Divorce, I am afraid, is quite common. A large percent of the population have had multiple marriages and divorces. Many families and children are torn apart because of them.”
“That is unbelievable. These people get divorced even when there are children involved? That is horrible!”
“Yes. However, there are many factors there that make the world a much different place than it is here. Children divide their time between their parents’ households and adjust to an unconventional family life. What is unusual is for a child to make it through school with their original parents still happily married.”
“I hope you realize that once we get married, divorce will never be an option for us.” I shook my head in disbelief.
“I never considered it to be,” he grinned and kissed me softly. “Until death do us part.”
“I love you.” I snuggled up into his arms and rested my head on his chest.
“I love you, too,” he whispered back.
I looked up at him with an overwhelming sense that something else was heavily weighing on my heart. “Ethan is not happy about us getting married.” It was more of a statement than a question since somehow I knew it was true and that fact deeply troubled me.
“He’s struggling with it only because he is concerned. You two are close, much like you and William. Yet, in a way, even closer. You two share so much in your athletics and common personality traits that despite the eleven months between you, you two seem more like twins,” he laughed a little.
“It is strange. I have not seen anything that told me he was unhappy about us getting married, but when you mentioned it….I felt it!” I gave Jackson a strange look. I couldn’t explain it any better but somehow I was having some of my other self’s feelings.
“Really? That’s amazing.” Jackson looked away for a moment and muttered more to his self than to me, “Perhaps the barrier is coming down faster than I thought.”
“I hope so,” I whispered.
“Well, that could be a really good thing or not. I am not sure. If it happens too quickly, you will not have the necessary time to adjust and learn everything you need to. That is what concerns me. Slip-ups can cause major problems and we have to be very careful about what is said and in front of whom.” His eyes widened, and he seemed more lost in his own thoughts than here with me.
“But would I not know everything from both worlds and already know how to behave in each?”
“Yes. However, sometimes, especially in the beginning, any small silly almost trivial thing can be difficult to not comment on and that is when accidents happen.”
I looked at him completely confused.
“Okay, for instance, in 2009 people use a lot of slang words and contractions. Here, we do not. It is very easy to accidentally say something inappropriate at the wrong time just out of sheer habit. Granted, you do not use curse words very often, but occasionally you have muttered shit when you have stubbed your toe or something frustrates you.”
I looked at him completely appalled. I could not imagine ever saying such a thing. My parents would kill me if such a word slid across my lips.
Jackson laughed noticing my expression. “Trust me. It is not a big deal to say that word in 2009. Anyway, you can imagine what would happen if that word slipped from your lips here in front of your family. There would be quite the fallout,” he laughed again. “Plus, like I said, people use slang and contractions mostly when they speak. Formal grammar is rarely used there and people do notice it when you have it. Even you noticed that I speak differently than all of your other peers.”
“How odd.”
“Not really. It truly is a very different world there. But once you become adjusted, it really is an amazing experience to live in both. The everyday things that we hardly notice here are now studied in history books and seem so refined and old-fashioned there. It is hard to imagine how we survive here without so many of the conveniences that we have in the twenty-first century.”
“Is life really easier there?” That world fascinated me so much and I wanted to learn everything about it.
“It is in some ways, yet in others…not at all. It’s almost sad in some of the ways the world has changed. Yes, we have washing machines and clothes dryers and our laundry is done now with the push of a button. We have the ability to get to any destination either across the country or around the world by driving a car or flying in an airplane. We have microwaves that can cook an entire dinner in five minutes, cell phones that fit in our pockets that give us the ability to talk to anyone in the world at the push of a button, but none of that seems to replace all that was lost. Things like family values, spending time with your family on Sundays after church, living close to them and being involved in their lives. Working out marital problems rather than just giving up and filing for a divorce. Morals and values seem not to exist nearly as much there. People have sexual relationships with individuals they have only known for a few hours and never see again. Kids bring guns to school and shoot their peers. Most mothers work outside the home and have flourishing careers of their own because things are so expensive that it takes two incomes to survive. Therefore, children grow up in daycare centers and only see their parents in the evenings for a few hours and weekends. And typically during that time, the children are
involved in some sort of extracurricular activity so the family grabs dinner from a fast food restaurant and hardly ever eat a meal at the table with one another. There simply are not enough hours in the day to allow for it. People are rushed, tired, irritable, and never happy with what they have.”
“That sounds horrific!” My mind could not fathom living such a life.
“Of course, there are always exceptions. Not every family is like that.”
“What about mine?”
“What do you mean?”
“Is my family close? Do we spend time together at all?”
Jackson’s eyes dropped to the floor and I knew his answer even before he gave me one. “Well you know that your mother, Amy, is a physician and your father, Shane, works at the hospital as well. They both have very demanding careers that take up a great deal of their time. Amy usually does not cook and trust me,” he laughed, “that is not exactly a bad thing. The woman is a horrible cook. But from what I have seen, you all sort of fix your own dinners whenever you get hungry. Actually, you found it very strange that my parents cook dinner together and we eat at the table as a family.”
“That’s sad,” I muttered in a low voice.
“Well, you and Ethan both play sports so you are not home until after dinner time. And you spend the majority of your time on the weekends with your friends…and me,” he grinned.
“What about Sundays? Do we not attend church together as a family and then have a big family dinner afterwards?”
“No, your family does not go to church that I know of and your extended family, well I honestly do not know. You have never mentioned your grandparents, so I do not believe you see them very often or that they even live anywhere close to you. However, you and Ethan are extremely close and I believe you two always will be.” He tried to give me a comforting smile.
“What about my sister, Sidney?”
“I’m not sure. I only met her once at your birthday party. You two made some small talk, but did not really spend any time together. I know she looks a lot like Amy and I believe them to be of similar personality from what I have heard of her. You and Ethan are more like Shane. You definitely look more like Shane while Ethan has features evenly split between your parents. But I do not believe that you and Sidney are very close at all. You have hardly spoken to her in the time that I have known you there, nor does she come home from school to visit your family, and she is only at Northwestern like me. I do know she is very feminine and you, well, you are more athletic. I believe you two are very different people with really nothing much in common with one another,” he shrugged slightly.
“You know, growing up with four older brothers I always dreamed of having an older sister to confide in, do things with, and such. Now, it seems so strange knowing that I have one, but have no real relationship with her.” This new world was starting to not seem so amazing to me after all.
“Trust me, your relationship with Sidney is not all that unusual. Family dynamics changed a great deal in the 1960s to early 1970s. Everyone became more independent in the United States. A lot of things happened in a short period of time that altered the country forever.”
“Like what?”
“Well, let me see….” Jackson paused a moment to think. “There was the Korean War in the 1950s, the president of the country was assassinated in the fall of 1963, followed shortly by the Vietnam Conflict. Rock-n-roll evolved, and there were protests over the war and with it came a lot of drugs, flower children, hippies, the Civil Rights movement, the women’s movement, Watergate, and the sexual revolution. The entire country went into chaos for a long period of time and everything changed with an economic crash in the early 1980s.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will. It’s very difficult to explain. There was so much going on during that time period, and then you throw in the explosion of technology on top of it all and things just could never return back to the way they were once structured. People became very independent and women came out of the kitchen, so to speak, and started having careers of their own. Of course there are still some cultures that have strong family ties, but not so much among the majority of Americans, I am sorry to say.”
“That sounds depressing. It is hard to imagine not having my family so involved in my life.”
“Most people in the latter half of the twentieth century and the first part of the twenty-first have become more focused on themselves and their careers and immediate families rather than extended family dynamics. However, there are many expectations to that and I am generalizing. But because of the way the world is structured and the fast rate at which everything moves, most people only get the opportunity to see their extended family on major holidays such as Thanksgiving or Christmas. Like I said before, there simply are not enough hours in the day to do all the things that you would like to do.”
His words disheartened me and I wished I hadn’t inquired about the status of my family. It was too depressing to think about. The rest of the evening left me feeling cold and empty.
***
I crawled under the covers as Mimi straightened up my clothes for school in the morning. I watched her stroll casually around my room, placing things here and there. Her constant presence in my life gave me a great deal of comfort. Eddie came in briefly and put some more wood on my fire and stoked it before he disappeared. Mimi came over and adjusted my covers tightly around my neck before she kissed my forehead and turned down my oil lamp and was gone.
Jackson’s gift was still lying in the little blue box on my night table. It glowed in the moonlight that danced around my room. The trivial little pocket watch that was responsible for opening up this wide new fascinating world to me no longer held the intense intrigue it once had. Instead, it now had turned into another frivolous trinket that resembled everything else that rested throughout my room.
I rolled over and closed my eyes tightly. Jackson’s words flooded my brain on the evolving world that I had not yet witnessed, nor now, had any desire to. The foreign concepts he had offered as explanations for it made no sense to my naive brain. As much as I truly desired and loved the idea of continuing my education and having the freedom to do so, I wasn’t sure if everything that was lost along the way for me to win that battle was truly worth the cost. I dearly loved my family. I could not imagine not having my brothers and their wives and children so close by. The idea of us all being spread out, perhaps across the country from one another, and only seeing each other a couple times a year, broke my heart. I considered my little nieces and nephews and how much I would miss out on with them if they were not living so close by.
I tried to imagine how my other self felt about not having a close relationship with Sidney or any of my extended family. I wondered if I was bothered by it or if it was just something I considered normal. It was weird to imagine fixing my own dinner every evening whenever I chose rather than sitting down every night with my family and discussing our days. How do people there ever really get to know each other with such informal ways of communication? Do the parents there know anything about their children and how they feel and what is going on in their lives? I seriously doubted it. It seemed to me though that everyone was too consumed with their own lives to take the time to get involved with their family. In my heart of hearts, I sincerely hoped that Jackson was exaggerating when he stated that this new structure was the norm and not the exception. I wanted so badly to believe that he had it reversed.
CHAPTER 15
Sunday, November 15, 2009
THE SUN WAS STRUGGLING TO FIGHT ITS WAY through a thick blanket of clouds when I finally opened my eyes. I snuggled the covers up around my chin, trying to keep the cold that lingered in the air away from my warm body. The images in my mind played over repeatedly like a movie on a screen. I saw myself looking horrified and confused as Jackson described the dynamics of life in 2009. I sat there on an oversized loveseat next to the fire wearing a dark blue dress that felt incredibly heavy on my torso
and fell all the way to my ankles. My hair hung in curls around my shoulders and I held a white handkerchief in my hand. I looked truly elegant, but the corset was extremely constricting. I wondered if it would ever feel commonplace to me.
Jackson looked so incredibly handsome in his navy suit with a vest, tie, and pocket watch with the chain hanging down across him. He was trying to be patient with me as he attempted to explain a world I couldn’t comprehend. It was the oddest feeling because I could actually feel what I felt as he spoke of such foreign concepts. Yet, I knew in my mind’s eye the other side of it as well. It was so bizarre.
I also recalled sitting by the fire with Olivia and Elizabeth while Annabelle, Emily, and a couple of other women who I knew were married to my brothers, sat across the room with sewing items scattered about. I felt comfortable in their presence, yet strangely anxious to be with Jackson. However, the scene before my eyes looked like something out of Gone with the Wind. The clothes, furniture, atmosphere—all of it was surreal to my evolved eyes. It was all so simple. Children running around with old fashioned toys, clothes, things that I had never personally seen before yet saw in history books and museums, flooded my vision. Apparently, my family was extremely large and almost always present. A young black girl who worked for my family would come in periodically with a fresh pot of hot coffee, and an older black man maintained the fire keeping the room warm and toasty. This bizarre world unfolded before me like a dream I could no longer awaken from.
I reluctantly climbed out of bed and headed for the bathroom. The hot water rained down on me and my tense muscles began to finally relax. I took a deep breath and wondered if this experience was ever going to get any easier.
I am barely juggling all the drama in one life, how am I going to manage two?
***
I finished blow-drying my hair and attempted to do something with it when someone knocked on my door. Instantly, all the muscles in my body tensed up again. “Yeah?”
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