Memory and the real thing
It was one of those moments when, even when it's happening, you say to yourself, "I want to remember this forever.''
Maybe we have a lot of those moments . When we're in high school, every second seems fraught with meaning and portent, and time takes the edges off things, and makes things fuzzy. All that stuff we thought was so memorable turns out not to be. And when you're young, life is nothing but sensory overload anyway, and the "I'll always remember this'' times tumble in and out of our heads like so many Styrofoam packing peanuts.
But when you get older, when you're so close to, say, the half-century mark that you can reach out and touch it , you get a clearer sense of what's important to make room for in the old noggin.
This past summer, I took my then 21-year-old son, Christopher, to a Bruce Springsteen concert at the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel.
At one point in the midst of the music and the crowd, he turned to me, his face full of joy, and said, "I just can't get my head around how good this is.'' A nice father-son moment, to be sure, and I'd treasure it for that alone. But in the months since that time, I remember his face and his words, and those words have come to be the way I look at my life. I wake up every morning, and it comes to me that life itself is so good that I can't get my head around it: my wife, my kids, my friends, the chance to do work I like and do pretty well, the smell of the air, the taste of morning eggs, all of it.
So, a pretty good memory becomes a way of looking at the world. Not too shabby, if you ask me.
Maybe we have a lot of those moments . When we're in high school, every second seems fraught with meaning and portent, and time takes the edges off things, and makes things fuzzy. All that stuff we thought was so memorable turns out not to be. And when you're young, life is nothing but sensory overload anyway, and the "I'll always remember this'' times tumble in and out of our heads like so many Styrofoam packing peanuts.
But when you get older, when you're so close to, say, the half-century mark that you can reach out and touch it , you get a clearer sense of what's important to make room for in the old noggin.
This past summer, I took my then 21-year-old son, Christopher, to a Bruce Springsteen concert at the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel.
At one point in the midst of the music and the crowd, he turned to me, his face full of joy, and said, "I just can't get my head around how good this is.'' A nice father-son moment, to be sure, and I'd treasure it for that alone. But in the months since that time, I remember his face and his words, and those words have come to be the way I look at my life. I wake up every morning, and it comes to me that life itself is so good that I can't get my head around it: my wife, my kids, my friends, the chance to do work I like and do pretty well, the smell of the air, the taste of morning eggs, all of it.
So, a pretty good memory becomes a way of looking at the world. Not too shabby, if you ask me.
posted by Michael Riley at 10:04 AM
1 Comments:
You are a blessed man, Mr. Riley.
A father myself, one of those oh-so-sweet memories for me involved taking my son, then 8, to Yankee stadium to watch his first MLB game in person. I doubt I will soon forget the look of awe on his face as we walked through the tunnel to the section where our seats were located. The lights, the green diamond, the crowds around us -- he soaked it all up with an excitement he could not hope to contain. When it came time for us to stand in support of our beloved Yankees during the 7th inning stretch, my son turned to me and said, "Dad, this is the best day of my whole life."
Yeah, I'm with you, Mr. Riley. There are some moments that are so precious you could never hope to forget them.
Post a Comment
<< Home