Its a snow day today, and I am sitting in my warm living room, browsing through my Reader and enjoying the fact that I’m not on the highway in the snow.

As I often do, I clicked on The Daily Post and read the prompt for today.  I chuckled.  The prompt tells me that today is my lucky day! (It is indeed) It tells me that I have three wishes, and that I should write and tell you what those wishes would be.

Now, I teach fifth grade. This is a topic that comes up on a pretty regular basis in my world.  I’ve given it a fair amount of thought.

I could go for the usual tricks and wish for an endless string of wishes, but I am old enough and wise enough to know that you can’t cheat magic and hope to come out ahead. And I’ve lived enough to know if that if my every dream could be magically realized, I would die from a lack of dreams.

I thought for a minute about wishing for a credit card that never comes due, but that would give too much power to money.

So I’m back to my real wish, the one that doesn’t go away.   I don’t need three wishes.  I only need this one.

I want to become untethered by time.  I love my life now, and don’t want to leave it to travel back for good, but I wish that I could slip away now and again and revisit the years that are gone.

I’d start with a visit back to 1993.  We would be here in our house, Paul and I and our three little children.  My parents would be here for dinner, and I would see my Dad holding baby Tim in his arms.  I’d watch Katie chatting with Grandma, and see little Matty with his soft blond hair and his big green eyes, watching shyly and staying close to my side.  I’d look at the moment, and I’d see it as the treasure it was.  I’d stay for a bit and breathe it all in.

Maybe I would drift back a little bit more, and check in on my childhood.  I’d climb into the “way back” of the station wagon with my sisters, and poke the heads of our brothers in the middle seats.  I’d hear Dad and Mom chatting up front and I’d watch out the window for the “Big Green Sign” that meant we were getting close to our vacation spot.  I would close my eyes and feel the moment deep inside me.

And if I was untethered by time, if I could be free to travel back and forth, I could fly forward a little bit, too.  Not too far, of course!  But maybe just far enough to see that my kids are settled and happy. Maybe I could catch a quick little preview of a sweet faced grandchild, just for a second or two.

That would be my wish.  Not to vanquish time, or to stop it. Not to travel back and have to do it all over again.  Certainly not to know my future.   I would just wish for a chance to unbuckle for a bit now and then and drift along my life’s path.