By Hallie J Carl
“Do you have tickets?” The question seemed reasonable, yet at the same time, unbelievable. Who knew tickets were necessary?
I have a tendency to go all in. If I like something, I really like it. As a teenager, this was an even stronger instinct. I would feel like I was the only one who could possibly like something as much as I did. I was the definition of a super fan.
For five years, spanning junior high and high school, the focus of my ardent attention was the show Quantum Leap, which ran from 1989 to 1993. I was in eighth grade when it began. My mom and I didn’t miss an episode. In fact, not only did we not miss an episode, but we recorded each one. This is well before TiVo. I would sit in front of the VCR and nervously hit the record button, stopping it for commercial breaks so when we re-watched it later, it would be commercial free.
I memorized the monologue at the beginning:
“Theorizing that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Dr. Sam Beckett stepped into the quantum leap accelerator and vanished. He awoke to find himself trapped in the past, facing mirror images that were not his own, and driven by an unknown force to change history for the better. His only guide on this journey is Al, an observer from his own time, who appears in the form of a hologram that only Sam can see and hear. And so, Dr. Beckett finds himself leaping from life to life,
striving to put right what once went wrong, and hoping each time that his next leap will be the leap home.”
There was something very captivating about the idea of a man skipping around time, fixing things that had gone wrong. I cried when the character Al sacrificed himself being rescued as a POW in Vietnam so Sam could save his brother. I picked a red dress to wear to homecoming (see photo below with my friend Hilary and please ignore my big hair) because I wanted to look like the woman who danced the tango with Sam. I learned about events in history that I didn’t know and championed causes in my heart that were brought out on the show: racism, abusive relationships, date rape and more.
My mom and I watched each moment of the adventures of Sam and Al. And we rewatched them. And then watched them again.
The summer between my junior and senior year I signed up for a week long journalism camp that took place at NAU. My parents drove me up there and dropped me off for my adventure. When they picked me up they had a surprise. We were headed to the Quantum Leap convention in California (yes, there was such a thing). The actors Scott Bakula and Dean Stockwell would be there. To say I was ecstatic would be putting it mildly.
As we drove to L.A., we talked about what it would be like. All three of us were excited. We got a hotel and in the morning, bright eyed, went to the convention center. I had butterflies in my stomach. As we approached the entrance we saw that people were coming armed with tickets. My parents exchanged a nervous glance.
The woman at the door asked the dreaded question, “Do you have tickets?” It seemed reasonable to ask, but we were novices in this convention world. Who knew tickets were necessary?
“No, we don’t,” came our sad reply.
“Well, I’m sorry. You won’t be able to come in.”
“We had no idea you had to have tickets,” my mom said. “Is there no way to buy them here?”
“We are sold out,” the lady replied.
“We drove all the way from Arizona,” my mom said. Looking into the woman’s eyes, using the unspoken language known as mom-to-mom. “Is there nothing that can be done?”
The lady looked at the three of us with compassion. Perhaps she could sense my complete Quantum Leap fandom? “You can walk around the lobby. There are some booths you can see. But you may not go into any of the sessions.”
I think my mom could have hugged her. “Thank you! Thank you so much!” the three of us exclaimed.
We walked in and I was in awe. Just being in a place that was full of people who were just like me was pretty cool. We walked up to a table that had QL t-shirts. I have always been a sucker for a good t-shirt.
Here is a picture of the Quantium Leap t-shirt with my childhood friend Tessa
As we walked around the lobby, I could feel my parents distress. They kept apologizing for not having tickets. The thing was, I wasn’t even disappointed. Sure, I didn’t get to see Scott Bakula and Dean Stockwell, but having parents that would do something like this for me meant way more than a meet and greet. I was truly so excited to even be in the lobby.
One thing my parents have always done, and continue to is take an interest in what interests their kids and grandkids. They are willing to tag along to just about anything. To become geeks right alongside us through the worlds of Marvel, Star Wars, and DC, books, dogs, Disneyland, etc. Soccer games, volleyball games, football games, track meets: They are there. They don’t just know the interests, but join in.
I have noticed this spill over to my kids. When Caleb liked learning magic tricks, Isaiah did too. When Isaiah became a master Star Wars encyclopedia, Caleb took an interest and joined in. If one of them liked Kendamas, yo-yo’s, disc golf, the other followed suit. Music, movies, tv shows they share together.
What was important about the Quantium Leap trip wasn’t actually seeing Scott Bakula or Dean Stockwell, it was having an experience with my parents. The memories made together far outweigh a celebrity interaction. We ended up going to Universal Studios to see Jaws and the Psycho house.
We wrapped up the weekend by going to the ocean. It was my first time seeing it. I stood there with my parents and looked out at that vast sea, so big and so captivating. In the photo, my eyes are squinting from the reflection of the sun on the water. My smile is fixed and wide, an obvious sign to anyone to see how happy I was. Strangely, I am holding a long stick. I don’t know why I picked up this stick that had washed up on the beach, but as I stood it helped bear my weight.
A lot of the healing work I am doing right now is thinking about what I would tell myself at different ages if I could. As I look at this younger Hallie I have many things that I wish I could share with her:
“Young Hallie, there are moments ahead in life where
I wish Sam would leap into and put right what went wrong.
Especially in the last nine months.
But that isn’t how our stories work.
Our trials and tribulations aren’t removed from us.
We can’t go back and hope for a different outcome.
We experience hard things, devastating things, messy things.
We are presently wading through a pond of quicksand.
Working through the pain of people’s expectations,
the frustrations of feeling misunderstood,
the disappointment of people not coming alongside us
in the ways we needed them to or thought they would.
I survey the damage that comes when the people we love the most
are hurt by other people we love.
We are walking through the bleakness of leaving a place
that has been home for more than half our life.
Each morning when we rise, we seek to bandage a deep wound.
There will be a few trusted friends who will come alongside us
and will not be afraid of the depth of our emotions.
They will not be deterred by the heaviness we bear.
They are trustworthy and amazing.
But what remains at the forefront in this season is our family.“
In November, we visited my sister and her fam in Nebraska for Thanksgiving. My parents were there too.
During our visit, there was a moment of deep hardship and pain. In the wake of this moment, time seemed to slow down. I stood observing a moment that will forever be etched into my mind and that helped bind up my wounded heart. Each member of my family was huddled in a circle, wrapped in one big embrace. Being held together by one another.
held (verb): grasp, carry, or support with one’s hand
The movement and intentionality of supporting with one’s hands. Grasping one another and carrying each other through the moments of life. If what once went wrong was put right, we would never have a chance to come alongside those hurting. To bear witness to people’s pain. To carry them through the unexplainable.
In that moment my hope in humanity began to be rebuilt. The foundations have been shaken, but the stedfast love of that moment has cemented a new beginning.
The last thing I would tell that young Hallie is that maybe the action of putting right what once went wrong is not so much wanting to fix the the thing so that it didn’t happen, but more how we handle things after what was wrong occurs.
In the Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson, Stevenson shares a moment after he helped two men who were innocent of the crimes they imprisoned for be released. He left the courtroom and noticed a woman sitting on the steps. He remembered she was in the courtroom many times when he had been working on cases.
Bryan Stevenson writes:
“I’ve seen you here several times, are you related to Mr. Caston or Mr. Carter…” I asked her.
“No, no, no, I’m not related to nobody here… I just come here to help people. This place if full of pain, so people need plenty of help around here.”,
“Well, that’s really kind of you.”
“No, it’s what I’m supposed to do, so I do it.” She looked away before locking eyes with me again. “My sixteen-year-old-grandson was murdered fifteen years ago,” she said, “and I loved that boy more than life itself.”
I wasn’t expecting that response and was instantly sobered. The woman grabbed my hand.
“I grieved and grieved and grieved. I asked the Lord why he let someone take my child like that. He was killed by some other boys. I came to this courtroom for the first time for their trials and sat in there. Those boys were found guilty and…..sent away to prison forever. I thought it would make me feel better but it actually made me feel worse.”
She continued, “I sat in the courtroom after they were sentenced and just cried and cried. A lady came over to me and gave me a hug and let me lean on her…I think she was with me for almost two hours. For well over an hour, we didn’t neither of us say a word. It felt good to finally have someone to lean on…and I’ve never forgotten that woman. I don’t know who she was, but she made a difference.”
The woman then said to him, “I heard you in that courtroom today. I’ve see you here before. I know you’s a stonecatcher, too.“
He laughed and said, “Well, I guess I try to be.”
She answered, “Well, it hurts to catch all the stones people throw. I’m just gonna let you lean on me a bit, because I know a few things about stonecatching.”
Maybe the action of putting right what once went wrong
is not so much wanting to fix the the thing so that it didn’t happen,
but more how we handle things after what was wrong occurs.
Let us hold each other at the darkest moments carefully.
Let us be people that others can lean on.
Let us be the stonecatchers.
Storytime with Hallie 
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