We had been discussing the topic of “time” with Professor Landstrom in the parlor of his old Victorian home, just off the college campus.  Jean and I were long out of school but we still enjoyed the company of our old teacher while sitting around a blazing fire, tossing theories back and forth at each other like basketballs, and then good-naturedly cutting each others' fancies to shreds.

     “When you consider time,” he said one night, “you think of clocks and watches.  But they haven't the slightest thing to do with it.  I've traveled forward in time, you know, and the hands on my watch didn't move any faster than they are doing right now.  If you want to defeat concepts like time, the first thing you must do is dynamite the 20^th Century concepts that toys like this watch represent.”

     “You've traveled in time,” laughed Jean.  “You mean you have a time travel machine in your cellar like something out of H. G. Wells?”

     “I'd love to see it some time,” I added to this comment, making little attempt to disguise my mirth.

     “You two have been reading too many books.  The only time machine I need is up here.”  He tapped on his brow with a long, thin finger.

     “So you imagined this,” I said.

     “Oh, no, John,” he replied.  “It is not imagination.  It is real.  I have been into the future.  And I have done it from this room in which you are sitting now.”

     “You could have brought us back some winning lottery numbers,” I joked.

     “I am a man of science, John.  I would not break the oath I made with myself as a young man.  Time travel is for discovery, not for profit.”  He repeated his tapping gesture.  “With this time machine, all things are possible.”

     Mrs. Landstrom interrupted our discussion with a tray of coffee and cookies and, for the rest of the evening, we sipped and ate and talked of much more current matters, such as the upcoming wedding of Jean and myself.

     As we left the house that evening, we promised to return after the business of the wedding, honeymoon and settling into the new apartment were all behind us.  He wished Jean and I luck, returning to the subject of “time” for his final words.

     “With the mind, there are no boundaries.  Least of all time.  All things are possible.”

     But that was the last time we were to see the professor.  He died while we were on our Caribbean honeymoon cruise. I made some sort of poor joke about him crash-landing during time travel which Jean didn't appreciate, but that is just my way of dealing with things that affect me deeply.  The old Professor had been a friend, a mentor, someone who had never stopped encouraging me to make the most of what I could be.

     The first five years of our marriage were uneventful.  In the sixth, though, John, Jr. was born and our lifestyle was much different after that as we struggled to balance child-raising and two blossoming careers.  It was when John, Jr. was six and just starting school that the most curious event of my life thus far took place.  On that day, my son burst in through the front door, huffing and puffing as if he had been running all the way home from school.  “Dad,” he yelled, interrupting my semi-comatose spell as I hunched over the typewriter concocting another article for the scientific community, one that was not going the way I wanted it to.  Frankly, I was bored with the whole thing and was glad for the distraction.

     The look on his face was a cross between wonder and bewilderment, although, as he told his story, it was the former that took precedent. 

     “Dad, I was just leaving school with Tommy and Kit when I felt something up here.”  He pointed to his forehead.

     “What kind of thing?”

     “Like something shaking…inside my head.  And then…this voice started talking.”

     “One of your friends?”

     “No.  It was…like an old man…he said he was looking for you but he couldn't find you.  He had a message.  Something about throwing away your watch.  And he said he didn't really have anything to say to you…only that…you should remember that all things are possible.”

     I stared for the longest time at the bright-eyed expression on my son's face before slipping my watch from my wrist, tossing it in the wastecan, and returning to my article.

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