THE TIME MACHINE

By Mark Heckey

I am standing in the middle of a dusty, dirty garage. A garage that has not had a car in it for nearly ten years. A garage stacked with boxes, containers, tools, skis, crown molding, several cans of old paint, a unicycle hanging from the rafters, and a refrigerator that does not refrigerate. Every decade, without fail, I sift through the mess, the flotsam and jetsam of my life. It is time to clean the garage.

My garage is a time machine. It has the magical ability to transport me through time and space. It mostly sends me backwards, to the past. But it also can thrust me towards the future. It is not the type of machine that H.G. Wells described. There are no primitive warlocks roaming my garage. The machine works with objects that once were lost and now have been found.

I scan the room. There is a wall of boxes. Memories. Memory contained by boxes. I approach them and read the labels of business, taxes, and estate documents. These boxes contain an enterprise that has run its course. A business that will soon close. I hear the Time Machine warm up: wap p, wap, wap, wap woo, woo, wuuuu. I am transported to 2012.

“It’s time for you to declare your job objectives. We have worked on your transition for 6 weeks. Time to share what is next for you,” the middle-aged instructor is facing a room full of fifty-five and sixty-year olds, laid off in the wake of the Great Recession. The circle moves towards me, many declare their goal of finding a new management job in a new industry. It is my turn. I blurt out what I have been chewing on for six weeks, “I am going to start up a home- based consulting company. I am going for self-employment,” I said. The room is silent. No one else has expressed such a crazy idea. “I am going to take my severance and invest it in my business.” Most look at me like I have turned into an alien creature.

I am snapped back to 2019. I pull out a box of project files. I thumb through the records of meetings, reports, and schedules. Time to move on. I pull out the boxes, one by one, and dump them in the recycling bin. I feel a satisfaction. The feeling of risking, of winning and losing, the satisfaction of following a road less traveled.

I sweep and vacuum. I try to force order on the chaos. I separate out a pile for garbage and the County refuse pick up. I start to shift the boxes around. There he is, peeking out from behind the boxes. It’s Ricky. Ricky Racoon, that is. Ricky is a hand puppet with black and grey fur. He is missing one button eye but still appears to have kept his gentle demeanor and good humor. Wup-Wup-wup, the Time Machine is taking me back to 1995. I see my kids in their pajamas and its story time. I slip my hand into Ricky and approach from behind the doorway. Ricky protrudes and I speak in his high squeaky voice: “Hi kids, anyone want a story? Can Ricky come in?” It was an enchanted time. I would have Ricky talk to them, nuzzle them, and play the tickle game. Sometimes, I could hold the high voice through a story book. Other times I came out of character and became Daddy again. The joy of those days fills me. I realize I am speaking in a high-pitched voice to an empty garage. Snap out of it. I return to the task at hand in 2019.

Now I am cleaning my work bench. Tools are strewn about from a minor plumbing repair. I chastise myself for not putting things away. These days, there are fewer projects happening on this bench. Now I quickly agree to hire the handyman. No more arguments with my wife on how long it will take for me to complete a home repair. As I put things away, organizing the plyers, screw drivers, and wrenches into neat bins, I notice the plaques. There are six of them, stacked like pancakes, covered in heavy dust. They are coaching plagues for youth sports, vintage 1993-2004. I loved to coach my kid’s baseball and soccer teams. Chris, my oldest son, Katie, my daughter, and Rob, my youngest son all played both. Happy to be on the field with them, organizing the practices, and scrambling to make the games on time, coaching filled me with meaning. My kids started playing at six years old and played on into high school, where the professional coaches bumped the Dads. Holding those plaques, I am transported to the soccer fields again. I can hear the shouts of nervous parents, the officials shrill whistle, the hot sun beating down on the field. There was nothing better. I dusted them off, cleaned a space on the garage wall, and nailed them into place. A coach’s constellation of six plaques, thanking me for volunteering. I would have paid to be there.

Next to the plaques, covered by spider webs, I found the license plate. On a white background it spelled in blue letters, SWIFTR. The California plate, small, sized to fit a motorcycle, had laid there since 2010, the year my brother-in-law, Wayne, had died. The plate, meant for his Ninja motorcycle, had no expiration stamps applied, one of the many small things that did not happen when he became sick with cancer. The Time Machine took me on a trip of sadness. I heard the conversations again, the ones where my wife tried to encourage her brother to struggle on. “I don’t like doctors. I don’t trust them,” he said. A surfer and hang glider, with golden hair and a strong build, he did not believe in checkups. He worked as an independent land surveyor and lived alone in Encinitas, near the beach he loved. I thought him a genius—an engineer who could play classical guitar. We could not imagine him weak and small as the cancer consumed him. His final days were hard with few visitors. I kept the plate as a keepsake after the memorial ceremony. But I had forgotten about it. When we took him out into the Oceanside Harbor and scattered his ashes, I swore to honor his memory. But I neglected the plate, tossing it among my tools. Now I felt redemption as I placed it on the wall over my workbench. I see it now when I do the laundry, a simple reminder of a gentle yet troubled soul.

As I rummaged through the tools and spare parts of workbench, I discovered another treasure. Filled with washers and screws, I unearthed Katie’s tool chest. When she was about seven years old, she began to watch me work in the garage. If I built something, she wanted to help. She took far more interest than her brothers. If I nailed something together, she asked to nail it too. I would let her drive a few nails. But my hammer was too big and heavy. I found a finish hammer and let her drive a few smaller nails. That Christmas, I gave her a small tool set. It had a hammer, a screwdriver, and a pair of plyers. The tools were in a wooden tool chest, with bi- folding doors opening from the center. At the bottom were two drawers for nails and screws. She loved it. She had her own tools to help Papa in the garage. Every time I find that tool chest, I am swept over by happy memories. It had surfaced again. Another trip on the Time Machine. The tools were lost but the chest remained. The memory persisted, intact, held in a tiny cabinet.

And so, as the day moved on, I continued to clean and organize but found myself tripping on artifacts of my life. The Time Machine moved me back and forth on my timeline. Towards the evening, as I sorted out the treasures and the trash, I realized that this day symbolized something important. I had hit a reset button and this garage changed into platform of change. Yes, we were empty nesters and our children had grown into their own separate lives. Yes, my career and work had come to a stopping point. Yes, we were getting older. I noticed the open and clean workbench, ready for a new project. I could see we had room to get to our bikes that had long been hidden. There was even room to park a car should winter bring fog and rain. The garage offered room for the new back packing gear. The Time Machine is ready for a new adventure. Now into the future.

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