![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Many years ago, my most prized possession was a book of memories: a yearbook from the Summer of 1978, when I had worked as a staff member of a Christian conference center in the hills of North Carolina. For a long time, that was the summer I considered the best in my life. All of the friends I had made were precious to me, as were the times we had together both in work and recreation. I have reconnected with a few of the friends I had back then through Facebook. For a very long time, I was seized with an acute feeling of homesickness for those friends, that place, and the times we had had together. I missed my college years as a whole almost as much, but it was the summer at Ridgecrest that caused me the greatest, most profound sense of longing. It was for that reason that the yearbook was so precious to me. The black-and-white photos that filled that book with its blue and green cover I would look over regularly, thinking back to those days, those friends, those sweet, sweet memories.
Then came my first marriage. Even before we married, the woman who would be my first wife cited my fondness for nostalgia, my mooning over those old days, my desire to live in the past as a reason why I did such a poor job at many things: I was too much in love with the past, among other great loves in my life, and that made me lazy, kept me from taking the steps I needed to take to become less of a screw-up and a more reliable grown-up human being. She, of course, took it upon herself to teach me a better way, and that better way came with a lot of self-loathing on my part: She convinced me I was indeed a screw-up, at best a fixer-upper, and I indeed should listen to her and trust her guidance of my ways.
We had a lot of arguments, sometimes the yelling, screaming kind. In fact, I had told her during our engagement that I didn't think the marriage would work out, but she convinced me otherwise, arguing that if I gave up on this, I was really giving up on myself. And so I had to deal with all these arguments, a fiancee and then wife who wanted to control me, and her consistent messages of everything that I was doing wrong. And one of the messages that sank in deep, apparently, was that my obsessive attachment to my fondest memories was part of what kept me from being in the moment and applying myself wholeheartedly to the task at hand. Mind you, the task at hand was being a good husband and housekeeper. That became my full-time position when not at my Federal job. Too much time spent away from this was seen as excessive time, an indulgence of my lazy nature. And yes, those old memories were really a problem.
So, one day, without her knowledge, because I was feeling down inside myself and I wanted to do something, anything, to get myself out of my old nostalgic ruts, at least to the point where they weren't hurting my duties as husband and housekeeper any more, I decided to make a clean break with my obsessive nostalgic tendencies by getting rid of the yearbook. I had several full bags of lawn clippings sitting on the sidewalk in front of our house, ready for the garbage truck to pick up in the morning. I quietly walked outside with the yearbook and placed it in one of those bags, then resealed the bag. I then went inside. Since I did not do this for selfish bragging or an oh-what-a-good-boy-am-I set of brownie points, I did not tell my first wife what I had done until late the next day. She was, to be honest, alarmed that I had taken such a drastic step. She did, I think, say that I was going to regret having done such a thing, because she knew how much I loved that yearbook. And she said that she was afraid the end result would be that I would resent her, blame her, for having driven me to decide to do this. I assured her that she need not worry about that. It was my decision.
Yes, it was. And I have regretted it ever since. Oh, to see those photographs one more time ...
I still dream of the place, and of returning to it.
Then came my first marriage. Even before we married, the woman who would be my first wife cited my fondness for nostalgia, my mooning over those old days, my desire to live in the past as a reason why I did such a poor job at many things: I was too much in love with the past, among other great loves in my life, and that made me lazy, kept me from taking the steps I needed to take to become less of a screw-up and a more reliable grown-up human being. She, of course, took it upon herself to teach me a better way, and that better way came with a lot of self-loathing on my part: She convinced me I was indeed a screw-up, at best a fixer-upper, and I indeed should listen to her and trust her guidance of my ways.
We had a lot of arguments, sometimes the yelling, screaming kind. In fact, I had told her during our engagement that I didn't think the marriage would work out, but she convinced me otherwise, arguing that if I gave up on this, I was really giving up on myself. And so I had to deal with all these arguments, a fiancee and then wife who wanted to control me, and her consistent messages of everything that I was doing wrong. And one of the messages that sank in deep, apparently, was that my obsessive attachment to my fondest memories was part of what kept me from being in the moment and applying myself wholeheartedly to the task at hand. Mind you, the task at hand was being a good husband and housekeeper. That became my full-time position when not at my Federal job. Too much time spent away from this was seen as excessive time, an indulgence of my lazy nature. And yes, those old memories were really a problem.
So, one day, without her knowledge, because I was feeling down inside myself and I wanted to do something, anything, to get myself out of my old nostalgic ruts, at least to the point where they weren't hurting my duties as husband and housekeeper any more, I decided to make a clean break with my obsessive nostalgic tendencies by getting rid of the yearbook. I had several full bags of lawn clippings sitting on the sidewalk in front of our house, ready for the garbage truck to pick up in the morning. I quietly walked outside with the yearbook and placed it in one of those bags, then resealed the bag. I then went inside. Since I did not do this for selfish bragging or an oh-what-a-good-boy-am-I set of brownie points, I did not tell my first wife what I had done until late the next day. She was, to be honest, alarmed that I had taken such a drastic step. She did, I think, say that I was going to regret having done such a thing, because she knew how much I loved that yearbook. And she said that she was afraid the end result would be that I would resent her, blame her, for having driven me to decide to do this. I assured her that she need not worry about that. It was my decision.
Yes, it was. And I have regretted it ever since. Oh, to see those photographs one more time ...
I still dream of the place, and of returning to it.
