Tag: memories

Looking Out the Back Door

A Childhood of The 70's Versus Today. Are We Just Lucky We Survived Our Youth or Have Our Kids Really Missed Out On Something Wonderful? — A-Broad In London

“When you take a photograph, things stay still. The way that they were, is the way that they are, is the way that they will always be.” ― Victoria Schwab

Everyone my age seems to have piles of photos all piled away. Notebooks, albums and event keepsakes. We had plastic totes crammed under the beds and stacked in the closet. What about you? Most were filled with photos documenting 30 years of marriage and family. Somehow, I also inherited photos from my childhood. The outfits my mother dressed us up in during the early 70’s seem criminal today. The Bee Gee’s hadn’t even been invented yet??

Every memory of looking out the back door
I had the photo album spread out on my bedroom floor
It’s hard to say it, time to say it
Goodbye, goodbye
Every memory of walking out the front door
I found the photo of the friend that I was looking for
It’s hard to say it, time to say it
Goodbye, goodbye

Photograph, lyrics by Nickelback

Back in the 80’s, there was a new business venture at college – photographers (mostly students) would show up at all the events and flash, flash, flash. Photos with names, dates and event titles were up on the wall of the walk-in store and available to print. The turnaround was almost immediate – memories ready to catalogue. Remember, everyone wasn’t “walking” their phones back then. We were dependent on someone else, a professional, to document our fun. It was only the beginning…

As I dig around through all these photos under the bed, clearing out, getting ready to move to somewhere much smaller, I’m time traveling. Mostly I’m thinking about all these people that were (many still are) in my life. At this age and circumstance, the reflective mechanism fires up like an automatic pilot. It comes with the new territory of stiffening joints and sleepless nights.

two boys 12 13 throwing toilet paper into tree in front of house, night

We were all constructs in way or another. Put together by so many people along the way. Still true, even now. These photos that I’m shuffling and sorting are taking me backwards in so many directions:

  • Dressing up like a black cat for Halloween in a costume my grandmother made – with a long tail I could pull around and fit in my mouth.
  • Family dinners every holiday and all the changing hairdos.
  • Riding the river on a black inner tube with my best friends.
  • Making homemade ice cream on those hot summer nights out on the patio at my grandparents’ house.
  • Toilet papering the tall trees of a friend’s house late at night and racing to get back in the idling cars before getting caught.
  • Camping out, fishing and swimming with my very large extended family every summer at the river while celebrating the week of July 4.
  • Living with all those strangers in the dorm – many still in my life 40 years later.
  • All my daughter’s childhood themed birthday parties.
  • Those wonderful trips to New Mexico my wife and I took almost every year. All the beauty that overwhelmed and inspired us.

“Carrying a photograph of someone in your pocket is like carrying a little bit of their soul.” ― José Saramago

1960s Color Photo - Etsy UK

For some reason we have a lot of duplicate photos in this collection?? And, why do we need seven shots of a five-year-old blowing out candles on the same cake?  There are a few very old photos from the 60’s. The pictures are square shaped, from a kodak camera. This was my grandfather’s camera, so he took the photos. He had bifocal lenses in his eyeglasses. It’s easy to tell the pictures he took, the top of everyone’s head is cut off.

These days it’s possible to digitize your collection of photos. Sounds so easy. That’s the first sign of quicksand. Once they all get digitized, someone then has to get that miniature Library of Congress organized. Never going to happen. Appealing to only rare personality types. Sorting the photos on my phone is a dark tunnel with no light at the end. How did I get over 3000 on this little device in the first place? I never take pictures. I hate when people do that. Where did these come from?

My grandchildren have grown up in a digital age. My photos of them are mostly those 3000 on my phone. Under the bed in in the closet they are of the pre-cell phone age. It’s been fun to travel back down these roads and remember the young-looking people orbiting my life. Each in their own way helped turn me into who I am. It’s like looking at the detailed schematics to my life when I trace this history of people and events.

I’m getting much better at pitching my possessions and “death cleaning.” All of my peers are telling me stories about their adult children having no interest whatsoever in receiving any of their parent’s significant possessions. I have discovered this heartbreaking truth in my own experience lately. Imagine my shock as tears were shed when I casually told of throwing away most of the stockpile of photos crowding my next chapter.

You can’t win for losing.

I saw this photo the other day. Notice what’s so striking about it? One common denominator about all the people in my own photos is that each was alive in the moment. Losing that has cost us something.

Woman Leaves the iPhone Behind, Enjoys the Moment Instead | Vogue

As I went through those photos the other day, and some more this morning, I thought about places, times and people. I’m sure that I notice so much more now than I did when I was there, “live” in the moment. I feel layers and layers more now, with all that history behind me. Maybe you should save some of those old photographs the next time you clean up. Get ’em out and go sit on the front porch. Looking out the backdoor is usually good for your soul.

“A photograph is a kind of time machine.”  ― Nicola Yoon

 

*Be sure to forward this blog post to someone else who might be interested. 

Dreams Come True

Lucid Dreaming – Have You Experienced this? | H.W. Woods

“I am a dreamer. I know so little of real life that I just can’t help re-living such moments as these in my dreams, for such moments are something I have very rarely experienced. I am going to dream about you the whole night, the whole week, the whole year.” ― Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The rare days when the temperature drops here in Houston means that it’s possible to get a really good night’s sleep. Without running that AC to death. When it’s cool, people fall asleep faster and more soundly. It’s cold right now. Going to get even colder next week. I had a very deep and detailed dream last night. It came early – during my first REM cycle. I awoke at 1:30 am and thought about all the details, trying to make some sense of it.

When I write about dreams here, I’m not being metaphorical. I’m referring to the real thing. The mysterious brain activity that science still can’t really figure out.

One recent brain theory suggests that we dream, a cognitive visual experience (Rapid Eye Movement), because the brain is working to keep that part of its wiring active during the night when our eyes are closed and we aren’t using them. When any area of the brain’s wiring isn’t active, it gets taken over by other parts. Isn’t that interesting?

What we do know for sure is that when we dream, the brain is hard at work. All of our conscious activity from the day is being processed, organized and new thoughts constructed. Maybe that’s why I’m rolling around all night like I’m on a ship in a storm? In my Sunday School class we compared the Christmas stories found in Matthew and Luke. So much important instruction communicated through dreams.

“Nothing happens unless first a dream.” ― Carl Sandburg

I tell my students they need to get more sleep. Sleeping and cycling through numerous REM stages helps to plant what they are learning deeper into their memory. It’s the easiest way to study! But of course, when you’re in college, who wants to get eight hours of sleep?

Often, I pray before I fall to sleep. Instead of worrying about my own problems, I intercede about the possible troubles of others I know and love. Very rarely do I have trouble getting to sleep (and dreaming) because of anxious thoughts. It does happen, but I’m always surprised a week or so later that I can no longer remember what kept me up and had me so bothered. Worries are never worth losing sleep and maybe a good dream. I think writing it all down before bed each night helps.

“I never wrote things down to remember;
I always wrote things down so I could forget.” ― Matthew McConaughey

I read a chapter or two from a novel each night when I go to bed. This is a long kept ritual of mine. I can’t remember ever dreaming about what I just read. Probably because I’m not reading anything too deep. I recently read a Cormac McCarthy novel that had me fidgeting. Of course your most recent mental content is ripe for a dream, but the brain works through so many files. Again, it’s a mystery about what falls into your dream basket, and what you will remember when you awake.

For the past several years, when I go to bed each night, I work on a story – in my head. Writing a book, sort of. This keeps the wandering and worrying at bay. I get about a chapter imagined before I drift off. A new one the next night. It’s a little bit of an extra escape (instead of being hypnotized by that blasted TV). The next step is to put these all on paper.

Sometimes, I will awaken too early in the morning. Standing there looking down at the bed, I have often been successful at willing myself to get back in and have one more dream. Some people awaken from their dream and immediately write down what they can remember. Your dream can make an interesting breakfast conversation. Rarely, but it’s been known to happen, people have recurring dreams. You probably need to go out and buy some new folders for your file. Do you need any dreams interpreted?

1,373 Old Man Sleeping On Bed Stock Video Footage - 4K and HD Video Clips | Shutterstock

For an aging me, dreaming helps me to anchor my own fading memories in place. It’s healthy to go to bed each night and then make plans to dream. It is now been my experience that to wish a dream will often make it arrive and give you a little peace and comfort, maybe just when you need it.

“Last night as I was sleeping, I dreamt —
O, marvelous error —
That there was a beehive here inside my heart
And the golden bees were making white combs
And sweet honey from all my failures.”
― Antonio Machado

Turning Loose

“The beginning is always today.” ― Mary Shelley

Saturday arrives and I’m reminded of so much that’s missing from my life right now. I even made a list. Of course in moments like this I don’t think about all that’s been added by friends and family to my life. So many good things that ought to be put on my list. But that doesn’t fit the immediate narrative.

Bad news comes to all of us. Sometimes it’s relatively minor but still very hard, can you imagine being quarantined on a cruise ship? Life threatening diseases, auto accidents, or economic disasters can drastically change everything in a moment or take long years to devastate.

“But in real life things don’t go smoothly. At certain points in our lives, when we really need a clear-cut solution, the person who knocks at our door is, more likely than not, a messenger bearing bad news. It isn’t always the case, but from experience I’d say the gloomy reports far outnumber the others. The messenger touches his hand to his cap and looks apologetic, but that does nothing to improve the contents of the message. It isn’t the messenger’s fault. No good to blame him, no good to grab him by the collar and shake him. The messenger is just conscientiously doing the job his boss assigned him. And this boss? That would be none other than our old friend Reality.”  ― Haruki Murakami

I was in the grocery looking at items I would never buy again (tomatoes). On Saturday mornings I always used to cook tomatoes for my wife’s breakfast in bed.

“The past beats inside me like a second heart.” ― John Banville

While gazing at those crates full of Saturday morning memories, I thought about that man I had just passed in the parking lot. He was sitting out just past the parked cars. It looked to me as if he was wearing pajamas and a ski cap. I think he was waiting for someone to come and pick him up. He was sitting there patiently in his wheelchair.

With that “poor me” list in my head and pushing my cart through the produce section I realized that guy in the parking lot was a dramatic sign. He was a message for me about my here and now. I think there are signs like that all around us and we usually miss out because our spiritual eyes aren’t attentive enough.

You and I both know how the past can hold us back from moving on:

  • unforgiven friends and relations
  • people and places you missed
  • conflicts that never got resolved
  • wonderful memories that can be no more

Some of the most difficult obstacles in anyone’s life involve dealing with the past in healthy ways. Problems like these are part of the human condition.

“In magic – and in life – there is only the present moment, the now. You can’t measure time the way you measure the distance between two points. ‘Time’ doesn’t pass. We human beings have enormous difficulty in focusing on the present; we’re always thinking about what we did, about how we could have done it better, about the consequences of our actions, and about why we didn’t act as we should have. Or else we think about the future, about what we’re going to do tomorrow, what precautions we should take, what dangers await us around the next corner, how to avoid what we don’t want and how to get what we have always dreamed of.” ― Paulo Coelho

Who wants to spend today, sitting in the crippling past, waiting for who knows what future to come? Instead, get up each day and make something new out of your life. That’s my challenge. Find something new in the produce section to buy! On this trip I bought some bok choy.