Looking Back

Did you lay aside your own personal chunk of secret time? Is there a closet or cubbyhole or nook or attic somewhere filled with boxes of age-browned snapshots and newspaper clippings about friends and/or dead presidents, football heroes who finally won a Super Bowl, LSD-inspired paisley album covers from rock bands whose names you no longer remember but were very important at the time, a silver spoon with the Space Needle on the handle that Mother brought back from the World’s Fair in 1960? Are the boxes sitting on that putrescent-brown, funny-smelling couch that no one has perched a butt on in over thirty years, the one that your grandmother let you jump on when Mom wasn’t looking, the one that still contains dog hair from Pepe, the chihuahua who lived to be twenty and ate ground beef three times a day, the sofa you’ll keep forever just because she gave it to you?

If you haven’t, I highly recommend you do so… while you still can. Here’s the recipe: Grab all your friends and relatives, invite them over for a party, ply them with copious amounts of alcohol and snap photos until your finger falls off. Repeat as often as necessary until you’re absolutely sure that you have memories that not even time can erase. Store in an un-vented room for thirty years or until your heart cannot stand it another second without partaking. Then, when your mind and your soul weary of life, when circumstances threaten to overwhelm you, find your way to your secret spot and open that box… sit on that couch and feel the years. Know your friends again as they were… as you were. There amidst the tie-dye t-shirts and your father’s WWII campaign ribbons, I promise you there will come a time when it will provide a bitter-sweetness unrivaled by anything else. Better yet, you’ll open a window unto yourself and the acrid stench of loneliness will disappear.