A dreamy, sincere little argument with time travel, memory, and the ache of growing older…

If someone handed me a calendar and said, “Pick one year. You may have it back,” I would like to tell you I’d answer quickly. I would like to be the kind of person who knows exactly which door in time I’d fling open and step into. But of course I would not answer quickly. I would stand there holding that impossible calendar like it was the dessert menu at a restaurant with too many options in chocolate. Do I choose the year that made me happiest? The one that broke me? The one where I could have said the thing, stayed longer, taken the picture, made the call, asked the question, held on tighter?

It sounds simple at first… relive a year that meant so much. Step back into it. Walk around inside it. Hear the voices again. Feel the old, ordinary light of an afternoon you did not yet know would someday become sacred.

Or maybe the temptation is not merely to relive, but to revise. That is where the trouble begins. The Back to the Future movies helped plant that glittering little idea in so many of us… that if we could just go back, we could tug one thread loose and reweave the future. We could save ourselves pain. We could make different choices. We could interrupt fate right before it cleared its throat.

But if the offer is only to relive a year… not change it, not fix it, not carry a red pen into the past… then the question becomes softer and somehow harder. What year would I want to inhabit again, knowing I would have to give it back?

I think about the year my children were little, and we lived in Texas. That year was full of good times and memories, the kind that do not announce themselves as treasure while they are happening. Sticky hands. Little voices. The chaos of toys and shoes and snacks and someone always needing something. At the time, I am sure I was tired. I am sure I wanted five minutes of quiet and maybe a clean kitchen. Now I would pay dearly to hear that particular noise again.

I think about the year before my Mama died, when there was still time to spend with her. Time is such a strange thing when a person you love is still here. It seems large enough to be careless with. Then, later, it becomes the smallest thing in the world. A phone call. A chair beside a bed. One more story. One more ordinary day that would not feel ordinary if I could stand inside it now.

I think about the year my dad died, too… not because I would want to revisit the sorrow, but because grief has a way of making even painful time precious. If I could have more time with him, even time edged in fear and sadness, would I take it? Yes. Of course I would. Love has never been very practical.

I think, too, about the year I was nearing the end of my master’s degree, searching for my practicum, standing at the edge of one life and looking toward another. There are years that feel like doorways. You do not always know, while you are walking through them, whether you are brave or just too far in to turn around.

There are so many things I would like to relive. And yes, if I am honest, there are many things I would like to change. I would be gentler in some moments, bolder in others. I would worry less about things that did not matter and pay more attention to things that did. I would keep receipts from joy. I would stop rushing through days that were quietly becoming the best ones.

But the memories I have of the people I love… the years, the rooms, the laughter, the ache, they are not gone. They are melded into my soul. They live inside me in a way no clock can undo. I call on them often, my memories. Sometimes they arrive like visitors. Sometimes like ghosts. Sometimes like warm sunlight across the floor.

Growing older teaches you a truth no time machine seems prepared to admit…  the things you miss are past, the future is not a fantasy anymore, and going back does not change what happened. It may comfort you. It may haunt you. It may remind you that you were once surrounded by blessings you could not yet name. But it does not hand you a new ending.

So if I could truly take a year back, maybe I would have to go much farther than the obvious ones. Maybe I would go back to the innocence of youth—not to change anything, but to feel again what it was like when life was ahead of me, and anything seemed possible. Before the world felt so heavy. Before I became so tired from its chaos. Before sadness had written its small notes in the margins of my heart.

I would like to remember the version of me who believed life made more sense than it does now. I would like to sit with her for a while. Maybe I would not warn her. Maybe I would not tell her what is coming. Maybe I would simply watch her dream and borrow a little of her courage.

And then, when the year was over, and I had to return to this life, the one with its losses, its love, its questions, its ups and downs, and I hope I would come back softer. Not younger. Not fixed. Just more awake to the fact that every year, even this one, is a blessing. Treasure them as they go, cause we can’t go back only remember and dream.