My mother passed away three years ago. It was her Time. Recently, going through a box of her personal items, I discovered the photo album from my Bar Mitzvah. Clearly, Mom had leafed through it often yet it seemed unbruised; it had scaled the decades like some casual mountain climber, effortlessly moving forward, unchanging, while those around it turned brown and dry from the sun.
I became a Bar Mitzvah in 1958, upon turning 13, and yet those faces in the old album - unseen for almost fifty years - were fresh and alive. How could that be? Some were faces I have never seen since, some were of people I saw a few months ago, most are dead. And yet here they were, not merely photographs but alive, leaping off the pages to greet their old friend.
I had invited almost everyone from my ninth-grade junior high school class and was not surprised when I instantly recognized every one of them. This would not be true of pictures of classmates from my sixth or twelfth grade classes, or most of college, for that matter. I remember no one and feel no loss. But these pictures of 1958 were different. I entered junior high as a child and left as a tall awkward pile of hormones. No wonder I remembered everyone so clearly – I had known them when my parts suddenly began to function, in a disorganized, thirteen-year old way.
1958 was the first time I realized the power that girls can have over boys twice their size. Boys tended to follow in their wakes, lumbering barges meekly trailing darting jet skis. I did more observing than trailing, as I remember. I did my share of lumbering about, of course; I was a 5’ 8” child wearing size 13 shoes: lumbering came naturally. But so did shyness. It would be years before I was ready to lumber in the right direction. These days, alas, I do a lot more typing than lumbering. Those jet skis are still out there but they are glistening dots on the horizon, unreachable, and not worth squinting into the sun to see.
It’s strange to think of all the people who reside within us as we age. That recently awkward junior high school student is close by, ready to visit at any time, but the agile high school student who followed him disappeared decades ago. The college student is gone – Vanished! Forgotten! - but the young man who hungrily courted the girl who would become his wife and who lived with his parents surrounded by friends who were (and remain) like brothers remains strong and alive within me. That the forgotten college student and the hungry young man were once the same person, inhabiting the same time and place, is not contradictory.
Places remain alive, too. I held the best job of my career from 1972 to 1974. I worked for a division of Rockwell International: the people and the events remain as current as this hour’s lead story on CNN. Memories of more recent jobs have faded but that thirty-year old position at Rockwell seems to have happened yesterday. No, it is as if it continues to happen today, as if I could still get into my car, drive to my office, and go back to work. I clearly remember the projects I was managing and could easily pick up where I left off when the company suddenly collapsed. Like junior high school, that place in Time remains fresh and sweet as a crisp salad, alive and vibrant, crunchy as I savor the memories.
Sometimes I think that Time has a definite shape and direction, depending on our stage in life. As children, Time flowed pipeline straight. Movement was restless, rapid, rushing irrevocably forward. The stream of Time carried us swiftly away from the safe, solid shores of our parents and into the misty rapids of our futures.
Now, Time has become a series of places, geographical places to which I am able to return if I simply travel in the right direction. Junior high school is… just over there! A plane flight and a school bus ride away! My entire class still attends, simultaneously 12 and 13 years old. My parent’s home in 1950’s
Eric and Molly came by while I was going through Mom’s things. Today, Eric has a lovely house, a growing business, and a wife and son who adore him. His life coalesced so quickly! Yesterday, he lived here and spent every weekend watching TV on our family room couch - a solitary marathon that lasted six lonely years. How did he put together such a successful life from nothing, in such a tiny sliver of Time? I don’t understand it; I’m just proud.
Eric saw me rummaging through the ancient Bar Mitzvah album and quickly our conversation shifted to what we were doing together when he was thirteen, and then sixteen. I mentioned a story about little league, and then about high school, and was astonished by his reply. “It all happened so long ago.” he said. “I’ve forgotten the stories.”
Forgotten? How, when the stories happened so recently, in places so near? Our little league team had a practice a few days ago. I can walk to the field and see our equipment lying on the grass. Eric just returned from high school football practice, and his coach is still his hero. If I walk into the family room and look in just the right direction, I will see him sprawled on the worn mauve leather couch, staring at the TV, with a lovable, drooling, 100-lb Rottweiler nestled like a kitten on his belly. How can he have forgotten these stories? How could the places seem so distant?
At 30, Eric is still shooting through the pipeline of time, with life surging forward in great pulsing leaps. He isn’t old enough to have rediscovered his timescapes, the places he can revisit in safety. When he visits his parent’s house he is forced to slow down, to travel backwards to a lonely, chilly Time from which he bravely escaped. Today, he prefers to have us visit his house, where he is warmed by his wife and his son and his furniture and his cat, and by the hilarious 1958 Chevy station wagon that he bought on E-Bay and now occasionally drives to work. Who owned that now-anachronistic car while I was studying for my Bar Mitzvah? Frankly, I’m not interested. I can easily visit the 1958 of my Bar Mitzvah, but not the 1958 of some stranger’s station wagon.
Sometimes I wonder what Time will be like when my wife and I are much older, when the past becomes the most precious asset we possess. The Pipeline and the geographical places are sturdy structures but Time cannot remain safe and solid forever. It will surely fragment and fracture, a drained glass slipping from our drained fingers. Near the end of life, will crystals of memory drift randomly from the sky like snowflakes, to moisten parchment lips? I’m not afraid, but I wonder.
I return to the Bar Mitzvah album from Time to Time. My mother is always there, vibrant and alive, waiting for my next visit, her love surging through death, rainbow smiles leaping out of black and white photographic emulsions. I did not begin to write seriously until long after her reading career had diminished from reading biographies of every president in the country’s history to skimming through romance novels. However, when writing about the death of Pat Tillman, or about the growth of my sons, or about how I have fought heart disease to a draw, or about the failures of the most incompetent administration in the history of the country we both have loved so much, I know that somehow my mother is with me still, reading over my shoulder. And I know that somewhere in this bald head a thirteen-year old boy wearing a dopey grin is having the time of his life showing off.
© 2006 Jacob Arthur
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment