The warp and web of the self: recollection of time gone
My father was an avid photographer who chronicles his family and friends and carefully put the developed images into books, labeling the pictures with names and dates. How lucky are we? Most people find shoe boxes full of mysterious photos with no names or dates and too often are left wondering who these people were, what were they doing, and when.
But one can also get lost in photo albums full of people known, loved, and gone. When we had to sell our childhood home on the east end of Long Island, I brought home all the photo albums, numbering about seventeen, and used my phone to take pictures of pictures to create a movie which chronicled our house, from the day my parents purchased it in 1958 to 2012. That October a bulldozer destroyed it to replace the old 100 year old farm house with a brand new McMansion, befitting a neighborhood which had transformed from potato farms and modest ranches to high end “Hampton retreats.”
Back to the photos. Recently I re-watched the movie and witnessed my childhood flow before my eyes and the myriad of friends that visited my parents paraded like ghosts, fading from one image to the next. We change so much over our lifetimes that it can be instructive to stop and ask: what of us endures? It is not always just the memories; it can be possessions you still love, songs you still sing, and places that evoke those we loved. Who among us has not gone to pick up the phone to call a mother, father, friend to share a funny story, only to recall, they are gone? We can no longer hear their voices except in our minds, or even more eerily, on recordings. Photographs can serve as that Proustian madeleine. Again, I digress.
But as I mused over this vanished past, I took stock of what persisted within me. And so I offer the following partial list of cherished experiences and objects that I, in late life, still recall with joy and treasure from my earlier self:
· Tea: I began drinking tea while a child and have continued to do so, in great quantities for decades. I find it soothing, energizing, a part of my daily routine.
· Mozart operas: I fell in love when I was thirteen and they continue to entrance me whenever I hear the strains of a familiar aria. I can usually identify it with three notes.
· Lilacs: my mother loved lilacs but we were not terribly successful in keeping ours blooming so now I welcome that brief week in May with the flowering bushes outside my door.
· “Auf dem Wasser zu singen” by Schubert: a leid that I learned when I was a teen and that still reminds me how ephemeral life is.
· Smell of incense: this takes me back to the Latin mass of my childhood and evokes a sense of the ineffable mystery that we fail to understand, as much as we might pretend we do.
· Walking around New York city humming without even realizing that I am: as teen I would venture out into my city and walk everywhere, unconsciously humming arias that is might take me a minute to figure out what they actually were. Today I find myself sliding into that pattern of unconscious musical memory if I visit the city.
· Being alone: as a child I spent a lot of time alone, not being particularly social as my brother was. I can still be quite content by myself although I do find myself talking to the dog and cat.
· Waves: at night we could hear the ocean from the windows of our house, especially on wild nights. I still can watch the waves crash and sense the passage of time marked by those never-ending and always changing rushes of water onto the shore.
· C.S. Lewis and Narnia: I discovered Lewis’ Narnia books when I was in second grade and have spent the following decades seeking the thin places in our world.
· Trees in winter: bare trees reveal a geometry of meaning that defies our comprehension but somehow assures us that there is an order and pattern in nature, in the universe, and we can only hope in human experience.
· Christmas morning: here the photographs are particularly potent as I review my child self embracing our dog, Koala, who arrived on Christmas and marked our growth into young adulthood. To be fair, our first dog was a beagle named Pealy who became a liability due to constant barking in a city apartment. Pealy moved to a farm in Montauk and lived out a much happier life in the country. But every Christmas was magical and full of promise — and still is.
· Dogs: We have always had a dog, although sometimes when my mother won, a cat. As an adult I have had a series of beloved dogs, each one his or her own personality and every one of them now an angel. (Although if I am honest that designation might not have been applied so readily during their respective lifetimes.)
· Amagansett: here I return to those photographs, all reminding me of a place, a time, a collection of loved individuals who graced our lives as children and young adults. This place as remembered was my Narnia and emblematic of who I was and who I am.
Those loves that stay with you are not really simply material objects so much as fragments of your younger self that continue to manifest themselves in your present. Now, one might read my list and think, wow, all “stuff” –no persons? But each item or experience that has lasted for decades for me and that still makes up who I am is connected in a web of memories of people, and beloved places — like my childhood home. We are constantly changing and aging in that inevitable way. But circling around us are the presence of those who lived with us, witnessed our babyhood, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and the now where you find yourself. When you touch, smell, hear, live in the present moment what you love, you will find those people and places behind you, shaping you into who you are, filling your life with grace.
And who am I? I will never quite find out, will I? Will you? But take a moment to reflect on what you loved and love, that is — what has endured. Remember, the present is simply the eternal moment — and you are in it.
