May 25, 2001--
The Indianapolis 500 was run today, I can't recall who won. Still today is a day for remembering. Especially for those who have fallen in service to our country, but also for any remembrance that brings back a special time. This web site is devoted to such recollections. I wish I could recount them all. Given enough time I may try. There have been quite a few. Some good friends have been left way back there. I wonder if they remember the same things that I do, if they recall the things we went through together. We did have some good times.
I wonder where are the faces, the voices, of friends and acquaintances of twenty or thirty years ago. Would they remember the things we did and said that made life what it was we thought we wanted? How about those Memorial Day weekends camping on Homer Lake, parties on Silver Lake, sunsets on Lake Michigan. Or departing the company of school chums for the last time, would they remember those days on choir tours, hiking in Pocket Wilderness, dining in the cafeteria, conversations in the Lion's Den, trips to Chattanooga. I can remember, would they? Or of a tortuous tour in the Army, accompanying friends to concerts in El Paso, driving to San Diego for a weekend, walking around Frankfurt, Germany on a warm Spring night. Where are they all now, is it a part of their memory?
And what of all the other things forgotten, important and unimportant, passages into adolescence and adulthood asserting an unrecognized impact even today. Are they never to be resurrected? The last goodbye of a first love, the farewell of a former army chum, the last meeting of a grandparent now long in the grave. Or even further back, into the depths of childhood, all those days and evenings playing around the neighborhood houses or across the street in the park and by the river, riding bikes together for miles, playing baseball for hours, playing games under street lamps, catching fireflies in jars, or hunting tadpoles in puddles, taking them home to see how they would grow. Laying on our backs on the lawn or in Harrison's pool watching the clouds float by subtly changing shapes stirring our imaginations, when life was so new. What happened to all those memories and friends of long ago and why is it so hard to bring back?
And of brothers and sisters, playing and fighting. Of family picnics at Belleville Lake or travelling to Tawas City or Pennsylvania, or with an older sister at Edgewater Amusement Park, or a State fair. We peered through our small porthole at the world trying to take it all in and make some sense of it and of our place in it. We walked our own paths little aware of the effects it was having on us, for ill or for good, significances fading from consciousness even before reaching the mind's surface, and the years piled on and on. Until one day perhaps, we cross a line or pause on some plateau, turn around and notice faint shadows lined up behind as far as the eye can see, few recognized, but definitely there. And we notice our own form and aware of the difference from a time past. And now what lies ahead seems to loom larger, have implications not recognized before. For a few moments anyway, and then the thought evaporates and we continue our course, until the we reach the next lookout point.
Until then the path dominates our perspective, priorities, and energies. But lest we forget, it is what helped make today and will help make tomorrow. It's in our blood as much as our mind. It's there for our benefit. So use it or lose it.
So who won the 500 this year?