Life in My Years

Going home was like easing slowly into a hot bath after a long, hard day in the cold. And while it was gradual, this relaxation of body and mind, there was no exasperation in the wait, which is rare for me. It seeped – patiently, until finally, it went through and through me in as nice a way as the feeling of home can be in times of want.

I’m back in my apartment now, and all I’m left of my short trip is a pretty, black box, decorated in the middle my parents’ living room, where my good friend and I sat on the floor, enjoying the sunlight and the clean and warm summer breeze wafting around on that lazy Sunday afternoon just hours before my flight back to New York.

And, of course, I’m also left with memories.

The older I grow, the more I value these kinds of memories. But with appreciation, there follows also a growing sense of helplessness that verges on despair. I will lose most of these memories: I will fail to hold most of them dear enough to my heart and mind, I will neglect them, I might fail to process them with the appropriate care and attention, or fail to find and maintain the meaning in them as I continue to live my life. Most importantly, there is the despair of what it means when I do fail, when people fail. Because what meaning is there when most of the events that make up our lives – the small and the momentous – are casually, carelessly forgotten? When our most dizzying joys and griefs all eventually dull to more or less the same colorless shade as our most trivial concerns at present?

But then – what is appropriate? How can we possibly pay enough attention to our histories, and how can we choose where to allocate our efforts? How does one determine whether one memory is more important than the other when the weight of any “significant” memory is so inexplicably and inextricably mixed with all the seemingly insignificant ones. Should one try to remember them all, to hold them all? It is impossible, isn’t it?

I wish there were a way to crystallize the years, days, or even just the fleeting moments of passionate feeling and understanding that inevitably fade. Then, happiness would no longer be always tinged with the sadness in knowing that the potency of the moment – of this moment – will, with enough time, be lost.

Then, I would always be able to remember with the clarity of the present how I felt when I first saw my mom at the airport Thursday night: the way her voice sounded as she called out my name when she saw me; the way her face looked as she ran toward me, her arms outstretched; I would be able to remember the feel of her kiss on my cheek, and how I felt as she hugged me, long and tight and close.

I would always be able to remember the way I felt on Saturday night, when I told my friends I felt like taking off my shoes and running through the park, and then how we all ran like headless fools under the beautiful star-filled night across the wide expanse of Lake Elizabeth with the grass still wet and cold and mysterious in the dark.

I would always be able to recall how I felt Sunday morning, as I walked through my neighborhood with the big blue sky above me, so vast and clear and bright; the way the trees waved and shimmered with summer winds, the look of the roads, familiar with memories of friendship and youth. The grass was sparkling with hundreds of drops of dew that, from afar, looked like diamonds glinting in the sun.

I wish I could keep all these memories and all the ones after in my pocket, and take them out from time to time to admire and to reflect and to remind myself of all the loves I have in my life, and how truly wonderful it all is, and how precious. But I don’t remember. Time marches on relentlessly, and all that is left are fragments of moments, small waves of recollection, faith – bits, scraps. Seconds. People forget. What is forgotten is lost, and it is as if those moments never existed with no one to mourn their loss. It is tragic.