Chapter 35
Millennium
The passion of a larger claim / Will put thy puny grief to shame
She was crazy, absolutely certifiable! To get into a car with a bathroom attendant and a waiter, despite their trustworthy nature (and unearthly beauty), was a sure sign of stupidity. What they were proposing was laughable – retrieving a time capsule buried 50 years ago which by all rights had probably turned to ash and dust in order to solve her qualms about marriage. Outrageous!
And through Tradition's broken crust / The flame of Truth's triumphant thrust
She shouldn't do it! She was a teacher. She cautioned many of her students not to accept rides from complete strangers and yet she was not following her own advice. What the redheaded woman and handsome man suggested was tempting, a memory she had blocked far from her mind, a promise she had made nearly half a century ago and had needed to be kept.
Below the seething thought of man / The push of a stupendous Plan
The strangers took her onto a strange journey back to her childhood home. The African American woman who now owned her residence had turned it into a bed and breakfast. The woman was pushy enough to be an aggravation. Angela merely wanted to dig up a small hole in the back yard, but Tess insinuated she needed a room after a wild New Year's night. How presumptuous! She was an award winning English teacher, not a random trollop.
When miracles are everywhere, And every inch of common air / Throbs a tremendous prophecy
But the air, the very air of her Idaho home spoke of memories and joy. To be alive in such an age! How true it was the first day of this new millennium. She thought back to the poem, wrongfully attributed to Walt Whitman. The true writer Angela Morgan said it best, "To be alive in such an age!"
Give thanks and clasp thy heritage
The time capsule revealed the answer to her painful past, that yes her father had left her but not for the reason she had thought it to be. The man was also the answer as to why her love life had been so dismal in the present. Her father's abandonment had soured her on the sanctity of marriage, fearing that the man had walked out on her and her mother for another woman would also be her husband. Finding the box and her father was the key for her future happiness with Nick.
She thought finding both the box and the man was an impossible dream but she was so wrong.
When steel and stone and rail and rod / Become the avenue of God
The real New Year's Day, Angela convinced Paul to drive her to her hometown and her enamored fiancé was happy to oblige. To her confusion, the capsule was sealed up outside a formidable office building. Had the angels taken her back in time to 1979 before the letters were uncovered by the construction crew?
And what thy woe, and what thy weal? Look to the work the times reveal!
Despite the original structure not being there, the memory of home was a siren's pull that called to anyone still living, or dead to her surprise.
"Daddy," was her first words to him and his tentative smile broke her heart.
To be alive in such an age!
With joy and gladness in her heart she introduced the two men she loved most in her life to each other.
The poem is attributed to Angela Morgan. I thought this was a strange episode.