"Memorabilia" (March 2009)

While I don't spend lots of hours on Facebook, the seemingly ubiquitious social networking website, I must confess its primary joy generator for me is reconnecting with friends and acquaintances from every phase of my life. Had we the sophisticated social networking tools (or even email), we might have stayed better connected after graduation, or wherever else our paths parted.

Nonetheless, I am grateful for the tools now, and to hear from friends from 1st grade, or my exchange student friend from Estonia that I got to know during my senior year of college, is just amazing when thinking back to the "pen-pal" days and horrible handwriting of my youth. (Incidentally, in looking up a recent reconnect in my high school yearbook, I happened to leaf through our senior year profiles, and there under my name it said clearly, "Ambition: to be a college-educated musician". The world works in funny ways.)

I guess it's on my mind these days as I've been making memories with little Madeleine, quickly zooming towards her 2nd birthday with a big grin and boundless curiosity. In this last week, we played together in her first real snow experience on Monday and by the weekend, we sat in the twilight on the porch in T-shirts, watching (and hearing) the Canada geese taking flight from the fields behind our house. She learns new things every day, stringing together intelligible and intelligent phrases, sharpening her senses, noticing ever more about the world within her view.

She is now forming her first real memories, though I doubt that many years from now she will remember feeling every crocus and snowbell blooming in our garden each day. I wonder with all her school years ahead what her relationships will be like and how they will be maintained and nurtured, aided no doubt by technologies barely imaginable and certainly yet to be invented.

I have a hope chest, given to me by my mom some years ago, built by some unknown relative who brought it to sea with him. I fill it with a handful of treasures from my life - my baseball glove, cherished letters and cards from family and friends, and items passed through the generations, amongst many other things. I've kept a couple of newspapers for Madeleine's hope chest, thinking that someday she will enjoy seeing the headlines from the day that she was born, or the historic election of the first African-American president. Of course, her life will likely be much better chronicled by the growing mountains of digital pictures and videos, but in just a couple short years now she will start collecting in her mind the memories that will hopefully last her lifetime.

She woke up at 4:30 this morning, and seemed much more eager to practice all of her vocabulary than returning to slumber. I let my wife head to the other bedroom to catch some precious shuteye before the first post-Daylight Savings time workday began in the dark. I lay there with Madeleine, finally working her way back to hear dreams just in time for the alarm to ring, back and head up nestled firmly against my own. I didn't get any more sleep, but I sure am glad for the simple memories of those pre-dawn moments. Time passes quickly enough without me hurrying it along. 

A final note: while flipping through that well-worn yearbook, I tripped across a picture of yours truly in the junior year Talent Show. Wearing the thin tie a la The Cars or Rick Springfield, intently playing my shiny and nearly new Fender Stratocaster - the same one I still play all these years later, and still love like the day I first opened the case. Some memorabilia are meant to be cherished; others, just used regularly as a reminder of where the journey has taken us.

May you too be surprised by a welcome reconnection from the past, in your near future.