365 Days (Part 1) | ✓

194. Time Travel

194. Time Travel: If there was a time period you could visit for a day, where would you go? Write about traveling back in time to that day.

Colonial America

When I see Colonial America in my mind, I picture a life made simpler, if physically harder, than life now. I see women dressed in their waist-cinching dresses and with their long locks piled into a tidy bonnet. I see kerchiefs around their necks and neat black shoes, silver buckles shining. I see dust from the roads billowing up from the horses and carriages, with small men in breeches and long hair tied back perched on top, the reins in their hands. I see large fireplaces, big enough to fit several people in, tended to by multiple servants, their plump faces gleaming from the heat. I see plantations with multiple buildings to house every need and wide lawns where children run and play.

I hear singing of hymns in congregations, and age-old lullabys hummed in an infantile ear. I hear men calling out to one another from their places atop their buggys, and the clip-clop of a horse's hooves. I hear a pianoforte being played diligently by a concentrating girl learning music, and the smack of wood upon wood as little boys pretend to swordfight each other. I hear furtive whispers as people discuss the possibility of rebellion against the English crown.

I smell the succulence of a feast prepared for a king, and the stark sweat of men coming in for the day, and the delicate perfume worn by ladies and dabbed on their wrists and behind their ears. I smell the stench of animal feces from the stables and, combating the putrid stench, the aromatic scent of the fruit trees, carried on the eastern breeze.

I taste the dust from the roads, grinding into my teeth and sticking in my eyes from a passing, reckless carriage. I taste the juice of freshly cooked meat, roasted over a spit. I taste the tartness of a jam and the peculiar sweetness of a plum stolen and quickly popped in my mouth when we go out to gather them up for a jelly. I taste the kiss of feverish lips of a man about to go to war for the thirteen colonies.

I feel the cotton of my dress, feeling it ridge over my corset, and the silk of my hankey, along with the embroidered initials in the corner. I feel the roughness of colonial brick catching on my hand and the smoothness of the wood inside. I feel the heat of a merciless sun. I feel the slickness of the rifle hung over our front door. I feel the heaving flanks of a mare in labor. I feel the time slip by me...