The Future

"I am living in the future right now." I said with a simple smile at my friends as we were visiting all together over coffee.

     This statement has been with me for quite some time now as I turned 40 and realized I haven't "arrived." to that perfect milestone of wisdom, not like I did when I turned 30. 

For in being 30 I had the best year I will ever remember. 

I understand this now....here in the future.

Back when I celebrated my 20th birthday with a long table full of friends.  My delight was in hugging everyone while walking around the table of 20 people so that I could visit with each person for a bit, while my friends and I sang together to the over head music while sharing chocolate brownie sundaes, for we were young and this was a very special day that I felt like the best part of my life was about to begin!

I remember thinking in that moment it was going to be such a great memory while wondering to myself what will the next 20 years would be like....into the future?

So now I am here. This is it, that very time I had wondered about. 

I am in the future now...

I have always had this understanding in me from back when I was just a small child. I had this fear in saying goodbye because I felt like I would never see that person ever again, this is why I always cried.

It has been shared that this made me a very sweet tender kind child, I only remember that feeling of not wanting anything to ever change. Goodbyes meant change, loss and being apart from, I had such awareness in me from the beginning of my time.

I am in this future now where it has come to pass that some of my goodbyes have been the end. The change of all things.

This intuitive nature of mine has me in awe of all these days I live here in the future.....

I am in awe that come tomorrow the future will give me even more understanding. I have such wonder and gratefulness that I get to experience the world of today. The future has once again been pushed out as time unfolds right now. 

Several years ago around the traumatic time of my mother's stroke I had a reoccurring dream of a small town cafe, a familiar place from my past where my Grandpa, Papa Rudy sat drinking his coffee at the counter. 

When he was alive he smelled of after shave in his flannel shirts holding a cup of coffee all through the day.

He was friendly, cheerful, outgoing and always smiling. 

His jokes and playful ways made him such a comfortable person to be around. When I was a small child I saw him sitting at the counter of the small town cafe. He was laughing with all of his friends in the early morning hour. He always seemed so laid back, so grateful to just visit and sit with people. I wondered even admired him for spending his time at the counter drinking coffee among the noisy kitchen of fried bacon and doughnuts. I had to ask myself if I would one day be just like him when I am old, sitting there telling stories and having breakfast? 

In my reoccurring dream that cafe is always there like it was when I was little, and my Papa Rudy is always drinking coffee. 

Now that I am here in the future carrying my own cup of coffee every where at all times of the day I smile to myself in how it's the little things that we pass down through the generations.

I had this dream where I waved to my Papa at the end of the cafe where he sat at the corner of the counter, he lifted his cup towards me and smiled. Then I saw out the windows water rushing in, slamming against the whole building and rising up the windows. It was powerful, scary and shocking to me yet no one inside was freaking out, no one around me even notice this flood. I stood thinking to myself that here I am just 32 years old, I can't handle this flood all on my own. I can't go out there into all that crazy water in such a very bad storm.....How did this happen?

The noisy busy crowded cafe brought me back away from the windows of raging water to the swinging doors of the kitchen where a waitress came out loaded down with plates of food. She swung out right in front me, as I was just standing there watching her charmingly serve everyone. She was in her 60's with big gray curls pinned up high away from her wrinkled yet beautiful face. She looked at me as if she knew me, as if she was just as surprised as I was to be there facing each other. When she smiled at me in a nod, in such an all knowing kind of way I was stunned to realize she was me! She moved with purpose, with delight and with her eyes on me the whole time after we had bumped into each other while she was making her way over to be next to my Grandpa as they jokingly talked while she poured him more coffee then they both raised their hand up towards me. I stood there in awe, in wanting to go ask her all about her life and what was it like? What happened? Are you proud of it all?

I woke up feeling so happy, so delighted that maybe I will really look like that when I am 60. (And it would be a great job to have serving food in a small town cafe, being there among all the activities and all the familiar faces.)

In that dream her eyes were telling me that she knew what I was going through, that she knew why I was there. That she couldn't talk with me, she couldn't advise or warn me, she couldn't cheat the system and tell me how her life came about to being there like that. Yet she knew me better then I knew myself as I was just standing there in surprise and in my confusion. Her eyes were my eyes, her smile was my smile and yet all her gray hair with wrinkles on her face made me want to be her friend, to hear all about her life!

    I realized after I woke up that I wanted the knowledge she had.

I want to be the one who looks out in clear understanding not the one who is afraid of the flooding waters coming inside the restaurant. Maybe I will grow old with hair like that, and have a cheerfulness that shines out on such any stormy day.

This dream left me in awe, in deep thought of all that I was going through. For the future is always in a blink of the eye!

In another dream more recently that same cafe had my Papa Rudy offer his coffee to my brother Derek and I laughed. 

Being there with both of them made me feel so goofy, silly and playful as I said "Oh no, He doesn't drink coffee, I have tried for years to get him to meet me for coffee and he usually just gets a smoothie." I laugh on as Derek nodded in his agreement making that cute face he would so often make while adding "But I will have some tea. Thank you very much" both Papa and I burst out laughing together at how he said it in a British stylish way. 

I woke up feeling that amazing joy, happiness in being with such people, who are no longer on this earth then tears found me in real time, in this, the future.

For when we fall to our knees and weep, we know all things the past, the present and the future.