It's funny how a sudden gust of cold wind, or an old building, the smell of smoke, the sunlight reflecting across the rooftops, the rattle of some dead leaves, the faint sound of a familiar tune drifting from a passing car, the taste when you bite your lip, the random sidewalk that detours around an old tree, passing the spot where a house used to be, seeing lights and shapes through dirty windows, or finding an old forgotten to-do list in your pocket can prompt a sudden rush of a million lights and sounds and memories of people and places and doors that you've walked through. All those fragments and sound bites become colored with age and each time you replay them they get a little bit better and take on a life of their own so that after a while those moments blend fact with fiction and you no longer know or care if your mind is taking creative liberties with the past. They become fond mental stories that get bigger and more nostalgic each time they are played back and for some reason they live out an elusive fairy-tale sort of existence... each time you reach out for them, they disappear like a puff of smoke. And yet when you aren't expecting them, there they are, waiting around the next corner.
Am I getting old? NO! Of course not. And when I'm 80 I'll still say the same thing. But I do believe that good memories are an important thing to hang onto and should be valued. Dwelling on them too much is a bad thing, but letting them happen across your path every now and then is good. You have to live in the present, but remembering the past and carrying some of the good things along – that in part make up who you are – is not a bad idea.
Here I go getting sentimental again, but isn't that the name of the blog, anyway? Every year around this time I start looking back and I see the good times and the bad, but I mostly try to remember the good. And as a new year gets closer, I look forward to all the great times it will bring and I can't wait to live them all!
