When I wrote

the following column, the calendar still said 1983, and we were bracing

for 1984, symbol of the very future itself.

I took comfort from the

belief that some old treasures, albeit material things, had not changed

in the recent past, and likely would not change in the next 17 years.

Which would bring us to the unthinkable 2001. Not a bad job of prognosticating,

if I do say so myself.

The house is quiet. Its other

occupants are asleep and I sit alone watching a candle shadow dance on

the wall

In the corner, the ticking

pulse of the great clock keeps pace exactly with my own. The furnace breathes

soft against the chill behind the window panes. There is a muffled thump

as the dog turns over, her rearrangements followed by an emptying sigh.

Outside, the wind sifts silently,

and the whistle of a train echoes across the low valley. It could be 1949.

Or it could be the eve of the next century. Such moments, when sleep eludes

me, lead to the contemplation of time and the passage of another year.

Upon this annual pinnacle I

stop to reflect and indulge in the tally of numbers: Inflation is down,

populations up, and terrorists abound. There are people living today,

thanks to medical advances, who should have died. And there are husbands

and fathers dead, thanks to intolerance and greed, who should be home

sleeping with their families tonight.

From the vantage of our youth,

when the number of years behind was small and number ahead unknown, time

crept along and one Christmas (that seminal milepost of our lives) was

barely remembered by the time the next arrived. Then just as we were getting

the knack of living and loving, time lurched into high gear and the years

began to swirl and spiral, until the Christmases and New Years slipped

out of their infrequent positions and began to run together.

At a certain point in childhood

when clocks and calendars and family history began to make sense, I realized

that with modest effort I, like my parents, have an excellent chance of

becoming a citizen of two centuries. While they small children then could

not appreciate their portentous accomplishment, I should still be well

enough downwind of senility to relish the dawning, not only of a new century,

but of a new millennium.

God was wise when he dropped

a curtain between us and the future. Bad enough, sometimes, that we can

remember the past. But gifted as we are with imagination and curiosity,

we speculate about life in the 21st century, the third millennium, by

looking to the past.

Sci-fi movies notwithstanding,

I suspect that the world in 2001 will not appear so very different from

that of 1983. Our homes and our cities and clothing even now reveal our

desire to preserve and restore the best of the past. We cherish that which

is old and beautiful in our lives, and I can't see us discarding our grandmothers'

cane-bottom rocking chairs or our mothers' crystal stemware just because

chrome furniture and pouches of nutrients are available.

And what woman will give up

the fun of shopping in a mall, as her grandmother did in a marketplace,

for the convenience of shopping by computer?

Some of us will still be sailing

when jet-powered cruisers are commonplace. One auto maker tells us that

the car of the next century is already on our highways, since his is built

to last.

There will be changes, some

subtle, some not so. Leukemia and other old killers will take their exile

with polio and smallpox. And when we plan our holiday feasts, the faces

of hungry children will haunt us as they do today. We already have the

"cure" for starvation, were it not for selfishness and corrupt

bureaucracies.

Concrete barriers around the

White House fill me with rage and frustration hideous reminders that even

at home we are not safe from those to whom human life is worthless. But

our world is lovelier by far than it was at mid-century.

It's not so bad, 1984, now

before us. Not like we were led to believe in 1949. And I think that 17

years from now, as we sit in our grandmothers' rockers in our candlelit

houses, with tokens of love around us, we will still be trying to see

into the gauzy-veiled future.

Looking back for guidance to

the past today we will take comfort that for every change for the worse,

there were at least as many for the better. And as long as the old clock

still measures my heartbeat, I pray I can see that my expenditures of

time and energy came down on the side of the better.

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