PAMELA JO BOWMAN – MESA ARIZONA – Sometimes, I can almost feel myself moving into another dimension. One day, you watch the sun set; the next day comes and the world feels different. Sounds are muted. Smells are less fragrant. Sights are foggy or hazy. In the end, I have to acknowledge that it isn’t the world that has shifted. The shift is in me.

I wish I could recognize the moment of change. What triggered it? Was it a song? A conversation? Just time passing and life experiences that have altered my own reality? If I could, would I recapture yesterday?

Certainly, some moments I do not want to forget. Inhaling my newborn’s breath. Wiggling their first loose tooth. Feeling their rib cage contract from giggling. Even seeing them feel pain and watching them grow from their own life experience is something I do not want to forget.

Other moments, I have forgotten. I know this because there is so much time I cannot account for. And some of those remembered moments that are triggered by a song or a smell do not bring me to tears or laughter any more. They are what they are, but they do not even warrant much energy in remembering them.

Perhaps, another dimension is just my way of looking at “it” — the “it” being my life. Fractured by time and places and people who probably have forgotten me as well. It is true there is nothing as constant as change. As I age, I can feel the change. It is what it is. So I shift.