A while back, I used a guest pass to go back to a former health and wellness club to swim. Our most recent gym, which closed, didn’t have a pool, but it was smaller, and the facilities didn’t include a whirlpool, as the club does, so I was really looking forward my workout, and especially the amenities afterward. It turned out to be rather like old home week…minus the old friends and the resulting camaraderie. Well, I expected that much. One just cannot slip back into former spots and move on as if no time passed. Turned out not as much changed as I thought. The pool was cool, as it had been, though not after I had a couple of laps in. The whirlpool was wonderful, the jets massaging all the right places. Everything needed was provided: fluffy towels, shampoo and body wash, hairdryers, even tissues. And carpeted locker rooms. Luxury.
Standing in the shower, I remembered when they renovated. The men who installed the hooks for towels and such, put them in…upside down! Instead of looking like a smile, they looked like a frown. Anyone could see whatever was hung on those would slide right off. Crazy what a person remembers!
But the more things stay the same…the more they change.
A few years ago, in a fit of nostalgia, I decided to ferret out the house on Little Moose Lake where my parents would visit a couple my dad knew. I had a good visual image of the tavern and the meadow we’d hike across in order to get to the fish fry. I knew the house was near the end of a long private road, and that we passed a golf course and a park to get there. On my excursion into the past, I followed what I thought was the “old timey” road out of town, and managed to find the tavern. The meadow was still there, being part of the park. So that didn’t change. Yes, I did find the house. Thanks to the couple who purchased it–from my dad’s friends, actually!–I was welcomed inside. And that’s where the “stay the same” took a nosedive. Being probably thirteen the last time I was there, the memory I had was…Well, let’s put it this way. I was now in a dollhouse. It wasn’t really that small, but certainly a lot smaller than the house built in my memory. Once I adjusted that perspective, yes, the kitchen was there, the view looking over the lake was there, the master bedroom upstairs with big picture windows facing the lake was there. Even the boathouse and the dock at the bottom of the steep cliff were there. I wondered if minnows still swarmed to nibble at toes venturing into the shallows? Crazy memory.
Going to the Big City of Milwaukee when I was a kid was a treat. Dinners out with my parents’ friends, the Holiday Folk Fair, the bright lights and big buildings. Wonderful, and at the same time scary. Instead, now I can negotiate the highways and many of the byways without trepidation. The same thing happened to Chicago, once our daughter and husband moved there. Though I don’t use public transportation much around home, because it is minimal, the L is de rigeur in Chicago. Parking alone precludes using a car when the L can get a person close enough to walk to a destination. That’s kind of like the reverse of finding out that things from my past look so much smaller than I remember. Now, even though the Big City does look smaller than I remember, the city is quite manageable. I love Chicago’s “mountains,” commonly known there as the grand architecture along the lakefront. But they don’t scare me anymore.
The one thing that hasn’t gotten smaller over the years is friendship. The high school friends, Girl Scouts, loom even larger when we reconnected after a long hiatus of almost 50 years. Their lives across those years enlarged with fulfilling jobs, extended families, myriad memories of travel, houses, skills learned, and perhaps discarded as well. My more recent friends enrich my life with their laughter, their encouragement, their own experiences that lead me onward. Whether old or new, people grew in inner beauty and wisdom, which in turn help me grow my own life into something larger than it was years ago.
Though the memories of physical places may contract as I myself become older, plenty of people, and experiences, are clearly larger than they were when I was younger. I may wax nostalgic about things in the past, but I have learned to cherish even the smaller memories. Those diminished memories still contain concentrated sweetness.