Enduring Memory

Memory is a funny thing. Some memories stick with us for the longest time taking us right back to the moment they were formed complete with joy, desire, rage, shame or humiliation, or whatever emotion characterized the event. Memories like that you actually feel rather than just recall. Some memories age with time getting soft and fuzzy, and often more palatable as we get farther and farther from the actual event. Our subsequent life experience shaves the sharp edges off these memories, curling them like photographs printed on cheap paper. And then there are the memories that don’t really have to do with experiences but with people and how we recall them, memories that are formed either by repeated or singular exposure that fix your perception of someone.

Enduring memory hangs on to details that were present – like needing to lose a few pounds or having long hair – when you were regularly interacting with someone. Even if you see someone after a key detail has changed, on your subsequent meetings the fact of that change will still come as a shock, for a while anyway, because that change conflicts with your enduring memory and you no longer have that regular exposure to reenforce that this person weighs less or now has short hair. I’ve had three encounters with enduring memory recently, and only two of them were about getting older.

Wait, she’s doing what?

My aunt has a best friend. This best friend has a husband. The husband has a company that buys season tickets to the Washington Nationals. Not all of these tickets go to clients. The best friend asked my aunt if I would be interested in tickets to any games. While picking up these tickets from my aunt I inquired about the best friend and her family and how everyone was doing. Turns out everyone is fine and that C., the best friend’s youngest, is now living in a trendy part of town and working as a bartender at an even trendier restaurant while she waits to hear about graduate school.

My enduring memory of this now at least 21 year-old is as a fussy about 8 year-old kid who didn’t like brown mustard and really wasn’t keen on eating the roll and could we just please give her the hot dog and some ketchup thank you very much. A benign encounter with enduring memory, the kind that comes with age and is perfectly natural.

Yes, we are all about to hit 40

No way to hide it: my high school graduating class, those of us that survived this long, is turning 40 this year in one massive wave.

We are the last gasp of the 1960s, post-“summer of love”, post-Prague Spring and assassinations and the Democratic National Convention, post-riots, post-White Album and Elvis’ first “comeback” special, and, really, post the naive idea that the world can be changed just by refusing to participate in the existing paradigm. We were born with the Stonewall riots, the moon landing, Woodstock, and Altamont. And we are getting middle-aged spread.

I’m on Facebook and I’ve reconnected with some of my 743 classmates there. If you’re not familiar with Facebook you might not know that you get to post a profile picture. Most people are pretty good about posting something (moderately) recent but to maximize recognition in these 50px x 50px photos, most people have chosen a close-up, face filling the frame and showing as much detail as possible. One of my friends who did this posted some photos from her recent vacation and it was something of a shock. See, her cheeks have always been a little chubby which is why the profile picture was no big deal; hell, we all carried a little baby fat in our faces even at 18, but the shock for me was to learn that at 40 she seems to have picked up all the weight I’ve lost since high school. Again, a moderately benign encounter with enduring memory that comes with age and is, in many ways, just as natural as the one that made me realize that yes, I’m getting older. Only with this one, it turns out I’m not getting older as fast as I thought.

And why didn’t the divorce challenge my enduring memory of you?

People’s identities shift over time. This is a fact. But lately the shifts have started to seem less like natural growth and more like “do you want to buy a some ocean front property in Phoenix Arizona” tectonics. See, a friend of mine after 16 years of marriage and a moderately easy divorce has decided in her 40s that “now was the time to really investigate this and explore being a lesbian.”

Hold the phone…what?

Yes, coming out of the closet in your 40s will have a tendency to mess with my enduring memory of you, particularly when you have a five year-old kid and have been either married or getting divorced the entire 15 years I’ve known you.

After I got over the spit take, and got over the flash of anger at the phrasing and my own prejudices – investigate and explore all you like but some of us have to live here -  and over a slight bit of envy – my friend is what is euphemistically referred to in personal ads here as a “professional lesbian” and I am, well, not, which means she’ll have a significantly easier time socially than I did – and after I got over wanting to point out to her that the state in which she lives is probably, outside the true Southern Bible Belt, the least likely to overlook a same sex relationship when it comes to child custody, and got over the impulse to say to her “Look, I get that busting down the closet door is all exciting and scary and transgressive and everything and while you are in for a very interesting time, after a couple of years if this is truly who you are it is going to cease to be a big deal so just chill already, OK?” I started to wonder why this fundamental change in her identity was such a shock, such a blow to my enduring memory of her when her divorce was so easy to accept when her marriage was just as long-standing a part of her as her previous heterosexuality.

Perhaps it’s because divorce is common, or maybe it’s because I didn’t actually like her husband; he was one of those men who acted as if he was the most virile, attractive man on the planet and of course he was going to refuse your advances but thank you for asking sweetie. Or maybe it’s because marriage is a choice not a fundamental part of who you are. Or maybe it’s because while I can appreciate that Hugh Jackman isn’t hard on the eyes, my sexuality isn’t so fluid as to want to get up close and personal with him and I have difficulty understanding how if that wasn’t  what you really wanted you could go through the motions for so long. All I know for sure is that my enduring memory of her just melted like the Wicked Witch of the West.

And maybe this isn’t such a bad thing. Maybe it’s time to try and make those enduring memories disappear and be more in the now. Either way, it’s been a crazy couple of weeks.