Time

I have been listening to some music from the late ’50s a time when I was first becoming interested in what was on the radio, and realizing that I was beginning to lose something in the process. Childhood and all the things I held dear about it were fast disappearing, and many of those I still clung to, I kept secret so I wouldn’t be ridiculed as “being a baby.” The wonders of Christmas, for example, I could only live vicariously through the eyes of my younger siblings. Junior High no longer held the fun of Valentine’s Day parties, or the local firemen giving us red, cellophane fire helmets for Fire Prevention Week. In their places we had a fossilized shop teacher, who admonished us that when we applied for jobs, we would all be ordered to demonstrate our ability to sweep floors, ignoring the fact that the entire class was bound for the college course. Other teachers began to threaten us with the “If you don’t pass this class, you’ll end up working in the shoe factory.” I eventually did that for a while, and despite the fact that the pay was abysmal, the work really wasn’t as unpleasant as some things I would later be faced with.
My grandmother was no longer able to pack up a lunch and walk my cousins and me down the road, across the low grounds to the shore, where we could splash in the icy, cold water of the Fore Shore, before coming back, gathering blueberries and wild strawberries as we came.
The toy soldiers and toy dump trucks became no longer cool, and even though I still wanted to play with them, I feared being seen doing so, so I didn’t.
Other friends were growing up at a faster rate, and were drifting off, becoming people I didn’t know any more.
I was also beginning to see the world through my parents’ eyes. I could see what they saw, memories of living on the edge of financial ruin in the depression, the uncertainty of even the next hour during the war, and I could not see in them the great optimism that was supposed to abound in the post-war time. Most of the people we knew had little money, and the only ones that did, were those few with dual incomes. The threat of a coming war with Russia lay heavy, not just that we lived in a Navy town with a big target painted on it, but my father had been called back to active duty during the Korean War, sent to Germany, and told stories or how close we were to another war in Central Europe.
I had vague dreams about what I would like to do, but didn’t know if they would come true. Childhood had been a reality, and not a bad one. I didn’t want to lose it, and didn’t want to lose the old folk, who were starting to go.
Those songs take me back to that time. I can still see the colors of the days, see the people and places that were so familiar to me, but it seems out of time, as if it had never happened. Is there a time when we will be able to go back and see the old places and the old friends again?
There are times in my past that are like that, and others that feel like yesterday. The smell of a passing diesel, the slap of certain helicopter blades, gritty sweat on a humid day that can bring my mind to Vietnam as if it were yesterday, even though it is 40 years in the past. Other years closer in time, also feel like they never happened. Time, or our memory of it, is a fluid thing, apparently, not running in a straight line.