For Ashley and Madeline
55 mm 1/30 sec f/6.3 ISO 800
Maybe Ashley and Madeline hanging out with me on an otherwise boring Thursday at the end of May, instead of a gray mid-week outing in the middle of February, made the recollections of the past a little sharper, a little more reflective for the soul. There are those moments when the new day, the new week, the new month come into sharper focus than usual, and the end of any school year is always like that. As May wraps up and summer takes hold, I wrap up this particular school year and tuck it away with all the other years that have gone by so quickly. Those years are tucked away with the artwork and Mother's Day cards, with the book reports and the research papers that somehow got "A's" even though they were frantically finished in the middle of the night (never was my idea of efficiently and wisely using one's time). May and June are constant reminders that adulthood is rapidly consuming my kids and the friends they met when they were barely past kindergarten. I have mixed feelings about the whole business. It isn't that I pine sadly away for the baby years with my kids (well, maybe a little, because babies after all...) or the elementary school days with projects and homework and after-school activities. Can't say that I miss those nine months, year after year, with children in three different schools and the unrelenting early morning drill that had to be carried out with precision five days a week. I spent too many months getting up in the darkness and the cold, longing for summer with the light and warmth and the carefree my-time-is-my-own attitude before the cycle started all over again. I honestly can look at those years with worn out satisfaction. They were lived, a chapter of life completed, and I don't think I screwed up the days and the weeks too often, though an honest parent will always think about those things that could have been done differently.
With my youngest son still in high school, and life pushing me through middle age, the kids and their school years are blurring. Memories from one year to the next are bumping into each other and it takes some effort to separate the years into their proper sequence of events and their own compartments of nostalgia. I haven't yet tripped over the memories as my father did many years ago when he started talking about the time we all went to the circus. My sister and I looked at him with confusion; we had to convince him that, no, we had never gone to the circus. This wasn't a case of his mind slipping as old age was approaching; his conversations and daily living never indicated that he wasn't as quick and perceptive as he had always been. He never attempted to recall any imaginary fun-filled trips to Bar Harbor for a week or a never-happened-weekend spent at Yellowstone as autumn approached. No, it seemed to be nothing more than memories melting into each other. A long ago real family outing had become entangled with another excursion that was left permanently in the realm of planning and anticipation. Time had momentarily pulled a fast one on his advancing years, as time will capriciously do, and there he was attempting to reminisce about the day he spent with his imaginary family at the pretend circus.
80 mm 1/30 sec f/6.3 ISO 800
I'd like to think that whatever sneaky maneuvers Time and Age throw at me in the coming years, my memories of my kids will be a happy, not-too-muddled place to visit. A place where regrets and missed opportunities and the sleepless nights take a back seat to all that was very, very good. Even the small, perfectly realized couple of hours on a late-May afternoon needs to be a memory that can clearly be recalled if I want it to. It didn't take much coaxing to convince Ashley and Madeline, since they were actually in the same state at the same time, to head out for wine and cheese and crackers. They are twenty-six years old now and a long way from meeting in Ms. O'Byrne's second grade classroom. They are a long way from anything to do with elementary school, of course, and a long way from the catty years of middle school (a three year waste of time, honestly, with months spent on ill-fated friendships, and lost hours chasing boys that were never going to like you as much as you liked them). They were in high school together, but their interests diverged just enough in those years, and when that happens, a passing smile in a crowded hallway is the best one can hope for. They headed south to their respective colleges, then Madeline went north to New York and Ashley hopped on planes to fly to all the destinations you can go to while you are very young and adventurous and unencumbered by too many of life's obligations.
120 mm 1/30 sec f/6.3 ISO 700
They talked and talked that Thursday, though not about second grade and crushes on boys and birthday parties. Those memories were just for me on a rain drenched, slightly boozy afternoon. As long as they posed for a few sweet pictures, I was happy to leave them with their companionship and me with my nostalgia. I hope, as the years unfold before them, their passions never become insignificant and that those passions never take second place to anything or anyone. I hope Ashley sings through the years as beautifully as she always has and that the stage and the cameras always let her know that those are places where she belongs. I hope Madeline gets blissful satisfaction from a classroom full of children and that it makes waking up every wintry Monday morning in the chilly darkness worth it. And most of all, I hope, when they are in the same town or the same city, they find each other for an afternoon together, even if there isn't any wine and cheese involved.
