Anachronism.

In many ways, we remember the history of women in clothes. In the fashions they did and did not choose. The corsets Victorian ladies laced until the boning squeezed their organs until they fell onto velvet fainting couches is how we think of that particular age of oppression. The sparkling flapper dresses and short hair are enigmatic of a newly liberated time. We conjure up and remember images and reenactments of the past, and because women are an unavoidable part of history we think of them too. Typically we imagine them young and rich, in outfits that we design now to reflect the treatment of women then.

Leotards in the '80s, bell bottoms for the '70s, miniskirts in the '60s. New decade, New Look.

The accuracy of any of these outfits or characteristics described above is circumspect. The reality is most nineteenth-century women weren't refined ladies covering their faces in arsenic-laden makeup and elaborate dresses. They were poor women who wore a few dirtied outfits (with fitted but not oppressive stays) as they worked in the factory where their clothes got torn in machines and their daughters got phossy mouth. The dresses in the '20s were indeed short - for the time - but unless you were a dancer in a particular profession they still went past your knees. It's also doubtful that every woman was walking down the street in the 10 or so outfits we picture as representative of any particular decade. Fashions don't typically have a clear dividing line between decades, and if you look closely at period pieces you can find little inaccuracies. Silhouettes that show up too early in the decade, dresses that were too revealing for the time, and makeup that is just too modern.

Leotards in the '80s, bell bottoms for the '70s, miniskirts in the '60s.

The intricacies of historical dress both for comfort and fashion are for women to know and men to speculate and fantasize about. But if you happen to care enough about historical dress you could find stories of women in what they wore and what they wear now. So we forget women's opinions on the matter at the time and we construct a look to fit our image of women. Obedient repressed Victorian women, liberated flappers, sexually active hippies, et cetera.

Leotards in the '80s, bell bottoms for the '70s, miniskirts in the '60s.

But this story is not concerned with a historical analysis or critiquing academics who put too much faith in the exotic tales of men who degraded women's fashion. Instead, it is concerned with one particular woman. One seemingly ordinary woman. One who you could find if you found yourself on a street corner in a small Pennsylvania town at some points between the '50s-'80s. While you sat eating your breakfast and pondering the mundane tasks for the rest of the day you may notice a red-haired woman standing under a tree carefully observing the passerbys. And if you looked ever so closely at her you may notice a few inaccuracies. A fabric that was little too shiny, eyeliner that was a little too dramatic, a bell bottom not quite flared enough, et cetera. Nothing too far off to draw attention, but noticeable enough that if you took some time you could find these little anachronisms. And you may come to the conclusion that she, herself, was a little anachronism. A woman who seemed just a little too ahead of the times.

In fact, she was ahead of the times. With a stroke of brilliance, years of research, and a dash of luck, Abigail had created an impossible machine. A machine that could take her back and forth through time. And with this impossible machine, she could have easily secured countless billions in funding, near-endless personal wealth, and a level of prestige that surpassed even the greatest physicist before her.

But that was not Abigail's plan, nor would it ever be.

New decade, New Look.

Either out of fear of what havoc governments could cause with such technology (her father taught her to never trust someone with a badge), or simply a lack of desire, she was content to keep the invention to herself. And only use it for personal ends.

When you ask the ordinary person where in history they'd want to go and what they would do you get very similar and often grandiose answers. Sometimes the adventure is small, going back in history to observe the cultural products of the time, the fashions, Beatlemania, 80s pop, et cetera, to whatever sanitized version of a time period they prefer. But often you'll have people assert they'd go back in time to save the life of a national hero or kill a national villain.

But Abigail hadn't spent an ordinary amount of time thinking about the subject. And she had reached a few conclusions about attempting to alter massive historical events.

1) The effectiveness of any such intervention at changing history was suspect. There may be a certain satisfaction in hanging Mussolini upside down from the Piazzale Loreto a decade or so early, but the likelihood of that fundamentally altering Italian history was lower than we would like to imagine. Mussolini and other dictators were uniquely evil, not as a result of their genetics but as a result of their circumstances. The ideologies they were surrounded by, the cultures that enabled, supported, and reproduced their beliefs, and the darkness that lay within so many. If Mussolini didn't do the Italian fascism, some other head-empty thug would come along and contrive the same story, to justify the same violence. As with any such assumption, one can not reject the null hypothesis without significant statistical evidence. And in the case of time travel, there was a significant lack of statistical evidence.

2) The effectiveness of any such intervention at positively changing history was even more suspect. This is the typical Butterfly Effect proposition, wherein a small change can lead to massive unintended negative consequences. However, her rationale may differ from yours. There are certainly events in history where it is hard to see an alteration producing a negative outcome. There's very little chance of a net negative effect when killing a bunch of Nazis prior to their most heinous crimes against humanity, in that instance observation 1 would come into effect. Likewise, there are some events whose alteration would almost certainly cause a negative effect in the long run. For instance, accidentally giving away key information to oppressive regimes that would allow them to continue their brutality. For actions that fall somewhere in the middle, where a change could lead to a positive outcome when dealing with matters of such importance as human life and history, it was critical for any good scientist or doctor to always err on the side of extreme caution.

3) Any severe deviations in space-time could jeopardize her position, technology, and ability to return to her starting point. This was admittedly a more theoretical model, with numerous assumptions made about the underlying nature of time and often dipping more into the metaphorical than literal. Given that the machine worked and she was in the past and she didn't blip out of existence, she assumed that the extreme scenarios presented by the butterfly effect where one breathes slightly wrong on a leaf and suddenly the entire world descends into volcanic ruin where nonsense, but larger changes could still severely distort the timeline. This could in turn lead to her displacement on the fabric of space-time, send her machine careening along its wibbly-wobbly web, and jeopardize her ability to return to the minuscule point in space-time she called home.

It wasn't a perfect model, and perhaps it was all wrong. But better to err on the side of caution. And better still to try than to not attempt at all.

So that's what Abigail wouldn't do, but what did she intend to do? It's quite simple actually. She would grab herself a memento. An autumn leaf and a jacket lost to time.

It's funny how a family member dying can make you become completely radical in the pursuit of making them happy.

Leotards in the '80s, bell bottoms for the '70s, miniskirts in the '60s. New decade, New Look.

Her grandmother had spent several decades in the same little town, leading a small life of high school sweethearts, town baseball games, and eventually a home with two children, a dog, and eventually a husband. But even in the smallest lives, in charming little towns where time travels lackadaisically onward, and the places and people you would never read about in a history textbook, there are events that matter. Minor errors, or moments of great love and hate that forever alter the course of events.

For her grandmother, the first of these events involved a teenage love affair and an orange maple leaf.

He wasn't the smartest boy, nor the strongest, or the most well-off, but he was charming, he was kind, and he had a smile that felt like warm summer air. He wrote bad poetry and kept sneaking alcohol out of his parent's liquor cabinet. And each day he would gift her forget-me-nots. Origami birds and homemade lanyards.

Until one day he didn't.

Her grandmother told the story as if it had happened yesterday. It was the day before he went off to the state school when autumn seemed to have arrived early with red and orange leaves appearing all over town. He could have stayed local but he wanted to get away from it all for once. She didn't want him to leave for fear he would forget all about her. So when he walked her home he grabbed an autumn leaf off the ground and asked her to kiss it. After some teasing and giggling, she obliged. The boy put it in his pocket and said she would see this leaf again when he came back in the winter. They went their separate ways and she waited. Only to never see him or that autumn leaf again. Perhaps he just lost it and being the sensitive soul he was couldn't face her, or maybe he did forget about her, but either way, he would have liked to see that leaf one last time.

Leotards in the '80s, bell bottoms for the '70s, miniskirts in the '60s. New decade, New Look.

Finding this memento was easy. It was after high school, her grandmother had graduated in 1957 and so all she had to do was spend some time in town towards the end of August until she saw the two high school sweethearts. At that point, she could simply follow the boy around until he absentmindedly left the leaf somewhere or looked away from it. At which point she could easily retrieve the final gift to return to her grandmother just before she left.

And it worked. He went to a small coffee shop at the corner where she hung near the doorway in her poodle skirt and a little handkerchief around her neck (an outfit that was likely a little too stereotypical for the time) until he left the leaf underneath the book to use the restroom. At which point she snuck the autumn leaf out from under the book and walked back to her time machine.

Her first victimless crime was complete.

Leotards in the '80s, bell bottoms for the '70s, miniskirts in the '60s. New decade, New Look.

The jacket was a bit harder to find.

The story was more dramatic which made it better to tell, but her grandmother could never remember what year or what time of day it actually happened. In her tellings, those details shifted over time depending on her mood or the weather Abigail supposed. All she knew is that it was likely some time between the late 60s and early 70s (Abigail came prepared for the 80s just in case due to the story's inconsistencies) when her two children were born to a man that would leave her that very night.

Her grandmother had two children out of wedlock with this man. He was older, funnier, and clever. But he didn't particularly care for rules or for stability which is why he would never marry her. But a girl could dream, and dream she did. They would go downtown at night to walk around and talk and sometimes drive around until the early morning. The last night they ever did this was one where the liquor got to her better judgment and she got a little greedy. And she asked that coyote of a man to steal her something from the designer store. A jacket with an excessive amount of fringe displayed in the window.

And he did.

He first tried to jimmy the lock but quickly realized that wouldn't work so he grabbed a trashcan and threw it into the window. Thinking he got away with it scot-free he turned and did a little bow to his lover. That's when she saw a figure in the far back, through a side window in an alley. So she quickly ran down the street and turned the corner while he grabbed the jacket to follow behind her.

Or so she thought.

She turned the corner and looked back, waiting for him to come. And when he did not she walked to the street again only to find it completely empty. She stood there for god knows how long waiting for him to come back only to realize she was on her own. And no boy with a sweet smile or wild man would put her life in order or stay forever. So she walked around by herself until was almost dawn, observing the little changes that happened to her hometown over the years, the pieces of graffiti hidden in alleyways and the trash from long-finished meals. That was the night she realized love wasn't about passion it was about stability. And that was the night she got sober, and that was the night she would meet Willie who gave her a ride home and who would eventually become her husband, and raise Abigail's father.

But she never got that jacket with the fringe. A jacket that looked like freedom. A jacket she felt she would wear forever if only she could have it.

After a considerable amount of trial and error, Abigail found the store and the jacket, but it took even longer, to find the exact date the particular event happened. She jumped around all over the 60s and 70s, she saw boys in town leave abruptly, and some would come home alright, others would come home with missing limbs and sunken eyes, and others would never come back at all. She got desperate at one point and went into the 80s which only demoralized her more. The constant traveling made her sick and she would get a bit delirious at points. But eventually, she saw it.

It was just another night of staking out near the store when she heard them, cackling down the street. And she waited until the very moment her grandmother turned the corner and her lover got the jacket off the mannequin. Abigail ran after him in the shadows carefully so as to not get noticed. At some point or another after some swearing and exhaustion, he swore her off, dropped the jacket in the mud, and went away. At which point Abigail gingerly picked up the evidence, walked back to her impossible time machine, and went back to her day and age. She was no longer an anachronism.

~

She walked into the sterile room with her grandmother for the final time. A crinkled autumn leaf with a lipstick stain she had preserved in amber and a jacket from the 70s with more fringe than anyone could think was reasonable.

~

Oh, my sweet Abby darling.

...

What do you have there?

Some memories.

A quick sigh, a knowing glance. But how did you get them?

A lot of effort.

What a final day.

~

Sometime later, after her grandmother, the strong-willed woman who dressed impeccably until she was forced into that hospital gown breathed her final breath, and Abigail had walked into the hospital bereavement room, she realized something.

All of her planning meant nothing. She hadn't avoided the paradox or the butterfly effect or any other theories of the hazards of time travel. If she had never gone back and stolen that leaf the charming boy may have come back, and her grandmother may have had different children. If she hadn't been stalking the window they would have never gotten afraid, and her bad romance would have never ended, changing an integral part of their family, and perhaps her grandmother would have never gotten sober. And if she had not done these things Abigail may not exist, and Abigail may not have gone back in time to do her mischief, but of course, Abigail did exist, and these things did happen, because she had done them.

So where did the story really begin? Where was the moment in time of origination, of an unalterable point in her grandmother's life that lead to this strange turn of events? Where was the real universe that she started from, or had she slipped into an alternate paradoxical one?

Abigail began to cry at that, not realizing she was laughing. She had become the villain in her grandmother's life, yes, the one thwarting all her hopes and her romances, dressing up as if Abigail was her in these time periods constructing a narrative to save her, one that her grandmother had no say in, one that her grandmother could only be an image in. A beautiful and important one, but an image nonetheless. But, it also meant there was no true beginning to their history. No one event that started it all and lead to these divergent timelines. And if there was no beginning, that meant there was no end. And if there was no end, that meant her grandmother's life existed in perpetuity. On perpetual loop in time, like a broken record, forever emblazoned as a tiny speck in the infinity of life.

It meant most of all that just like the old song, the story of their love, it had no end.

So she walked out the hospital that evening, with the jacket still laid over her grandmother and the amber leaf collected by her parents, and resolved to put on her nicest dress and start a history of her own.