Toasting the Past. Here's to the Future

Memories are some of our most precious and fragile possessions. They are owned by us, but they are held at the mercy of time. We can try to hold on to them through scrapbooks, tangible reminders of our bygone days. We can tell and re-tell stories over dinners and drinks with friends. Still, none of this changes the fact that memories, like much else in life, are as fragile as a porcelain doll for two primary reasons: 1) They can be forgotten and drift away into the past and 2) Memories are lighted in view of our perceptions at the time.

For these two reasons, I am always hesitant to take a walk along the windy, sometimes dangerous, path called "memory lane." I am always hesitant to return back to the physical locations where so many memories are held. Places, more than any other entity, can ruin memories more surely than anything else. Places like schools, churches, libraries change so easily, so inconspicuously, but to those who remember the "grand" days, the changes are huge.

And, it's not so much the changes themselves as the fact that the changes in places only reinforce the changes in administrations, in procedures, and in people. Let's face it. People change. They come and go. They are replaceable. And we never like to learn that the people we once loved are no more. That the friends we cherished so dearly have developed into someone we don't recognize. But, more than anything, we don't like to think that WE have changed so much that our past is no longer recognizable as ours. That new people walk down the halls we once traversed. That new people are winning the awards and accolades we once won. Or, even the reverse is true. We don't like learning that everything we had strove and worked for is being lost in a tidal wave of confusion and laziness.

For these reasons and more I was extremely nervous and worried about returning to the Texas Hillcountry, the place I called home for more than ten years. I had planned the visit for the express purpose of visiting my friend Kassie, my best friend in high school and a dearly, dearly beloved friend now, all these years later. (We actually calculated and discovered that this marks our 10th year of friendship!) I haven't seen Kassie in about three years, and although we converse through facebook and on the phone, it's not the same as seeing her face-to-face.

So, I decided to make the 8 hour trek on I-10 to see her and to re-unite ourselves with each other once again. Kassie now works and lives in Fredericksburg, Tx. I had planned to drive straight to her place and spend as much time with her as possible and then do some other visiting and memory-reviving on Sunday. Well, it's Sunday now, and I've learned one thing. I don't want to take any more walks down memory lane. I don't want to visit any place else.

Fredericksburg couldn't have been a more perfect location for this hesitant mission if I had to dream it up myself. I had never thought about it, but it served as the perfect foundation for my trips into my past life. For one thing, all of my Fburg memories are good. For another, they are few. Fredericksburg was a little over an hour away from my home, so we never went there often, choosing instead to do our shopping at Marble Falls or Austin. And while I noticed some changes in Fredericksburg, I never knew it well enough to be pleased or disappointed with what I noticed. So, it became the perfect place for Kassie and I to reminisce from as it had a sense of objectivity attached to it. I could talk about the people and places we once saw every day, without having the dread of change and replacement attached to it, because I couldn't see it to know or feel it. As far as I'm concerned, my home is still in tact.

Additionally, Kassie and I had a great time seeing the sights of Fredericksburg. We kept with tradition and went to the theatres, watching Ren MacCormack's fine form in Footloose. We sniffed the wonderful aromas of a variety of exotic teas at a gourmet coffee house. We sashayed up and down and up and down main street, trying the patience of sales clerks as we tried on Halloween and renaissance masks and questioned their choice in music. We walked through music shops and candle shops, browsed through and delighted in Christmas shops with little elf decorations. We salivated over platefuls of Southwestern, Oriental, and German cooking. And then, we basked in the glories of Texas wildflowers and interesting garden accouterments while lamenting the fact that the Texas sun has been overly brutal to the harvests this year. Nights we spent back at her place, catching up on the gossip of our old class, the miscellaneous details of our current lives, and the declining state of our once-great Llano Jacket Band. And while occasional stabs of nostalgia hit me, the pain I usually feel did not.

So, now I find myself in a new coffee shop in Kingsland, Tx, another old stomping ground. I am hoping to meet a friend here, in neutral territory once again, but as I had not planned on stopping here, I am not sure if she will make it. But, I will wait in the hopes of "what ifs" and toast to the future. A future of brightness and new things. A future full of pleasant memories to be made and kept. And, I toast to the past, everything good and bad that has brought me to this point, that has made me . . . ME.