I knew something was amiss when my mailbox started vibrating. It's attached to a stone wall, so this was disconcerting. I reached out to touch it when a beam of light shot out from it--or into it--it was hard to see. I looked around to see if anyone else was seeing what I was seeing. No one was there but me. In an instant, the light was gone and the mailbox was still. It was the same old, faux brass thing it had always been.
Was I imagining this? Had I had too much coffee? I tentatively reached out and opened the flap of the box. Inside was a letter. I picked it up. The paper was rough, it looked halfway between hand-made and machine-made, it was lightweight and had an odd smell. It was like nothing I'd ever seen before. It was addressed to me.
I opened it with shaking fingers. What is this? I kept asking myself. It was a letter. A letter from my daughter and it was dated 2038--when she would be 32 years old.
This is what it said.
Dear Mom,
We are experimenting with new technology so I am not even sure if this will reach you, though I guess I'll know the instant you get it, as the present will instantly change. I wonder what will change? At any rate, I don't want to waste time considering the issues of time and space continuum.
I decided to write this letter when I was going through our basement and found your old Obama yard sign. It's amazing to me to read the history and see how hard everyone fought to get President Obama elected. Of course it's all ancient history now, since he was President when I was just a kid. Since him we've had a Muslim, lesbian President and she won in a landslide. Was there a time when to be Muslim was as slur? It seems unfathomable to me--as distant as slavery, as distant as serfdom--though I realize (ahem) all of this has happened in your lifetime. And wtf on something called "Proposition 8?" (Sorry for the f-word.)
I tell people all the time--I grew up in a house where my parents are constantly telling me that to forget your history makes you doomed to repeat it. But given how things used to be, it's hard not to want to forget. The reason all of this is coming back to me now is because it's the anniversary, the 30th anniversary, of the "first black President" in America, but even that seems like an odd thing to say, given that we don't even use racial labels anymore. Of course I know that people still think of themselves a certain way, and think of others a certain way, but it's just not the same anymore. Calling someone black or white is like calling someone a suffragette. It has historical resonance, sure, but what does it really mean--today?
I was out on a dairy farm the other day checking the mechanisms on the wind turbines which are standard power generators throughout the world now. It seems odd to have spell that out, unimaginable to consider what the world was like before the Apollo project, which revolutionized how we use power and essentially began the reversal of the damage of global warming. Now people refer to global warming as the environmental equivalent of the cold war.
So I was on this dairy farm and I was talking to the guy that runs it and I ended up somehow telling him about your Obama sign and he laughed and said he still remembers some people in his family being up in arms about Obama. We both marveled at how much things have changed (thankfully). So I guess in a way I am writing to you to say that if you are feeling lazy, or complacent, or if there are some polls out that show Obama ahead right now, or anything like that--that you keep fighting. Because you are fighting, I am living in this future that wouldn't be here otherwise. I am typing this fast and I know you'll scold me for not remembering who Obama ran against, but all I know is that whoever he is, he is not the answer--and I know that because I am living here in the future, in a world that chose to go in a different direction because of people like you and all the other folks working for change and yes, because of President Obama. But one thing we learned from his administration was to work hard and never give up.
So anyway--thanks for all your hard work and keep it up. If my calculations are correct, you still have about 11 days before the final vote. I am living the change thanks to you all. So just keep doing whatever you have been doing and don't stop until the job is done.
Love,
Your daughter O--