You don’t need a time machine to travel back in time. You really don’t.

I know this because I did it a few days ago.

While staying with my mom for the holidays, I happened to open a long-forgotten drawer in a chest in the room where I was sleeping. As I pulled it out, I realized it wasn’t entirely empty. There, under an old Bible, the edges of several age-darkened pages peeked out. I couldn’t resist them.

Within seconds, I realized I was holding a time capsule – an essay I wrote in 1985. Ironically, this is the same year Back to the Future was released in theaters, but that’s where the similarities end. I could see traces of the first page through the cover sheet. I had scrawled what looked like a rudimentary attempt at calligraphy, announcing it as, simply, “A Christmas Memory.”

By the first sentence, I saw the world through childhood eyes… And, I heard the playful, bashful, unmistakable rise and fall of my grandfather’s voice as he shared the details that filled my handwritten pages. I poured through the loops, peaks, valleys and slants of my cursive lines.

A phantom cramp hit my hand as I remembered how I had to write – and rewrite and rewrite – stories for school (before typed assignments were the norm). But, the delicate dance of my childhood voice with my grandfather’s captivated me. It traveled through descriptions of Christmases long before my parents were born – and what they meant to my grandfather as a boy. And, it turned, dipped and twisted through the mind of the smaller, younger, wide-eyed person I used to be.

So, in the span of few minutes, I traveled over 30 years into the wonder-filled past (when I wrote it) – then close to 100 years into the past (for my grandfather’s memories) – then back again. 

And, I didn’t need a DeLorean.