Musings from my journal

What has become of the books and friends that have influenced my life?

Childhood friends. My youthful soul mates. Albie Meyer—the scrawny kid who when slightly older could be the character in Charles Atlas ads always having sand kicked in his eyes. He was my first boyfriend at age seven. We were inseparable. I, always defending Albie against the tougher boys. Albie, who upon entering Junior High School was tested as a genius and trotted off to a special school—away from me—never to be seen again-- only a few years ago to be googled and discovered to have been married, divorced, remarried and father of four sons and a tenured professor of math at Harvard. A few emails passed between us and then once again the silence.

Or my girlfriend, Lorraine. Friends through childhood, who, because of her need to copy everything I wore by having her mother purchase identical outfits, inspired me by age 12 to start to design and sew my own clothes. I remember going to her wedding when I was pregnant. But after her marriage, we never saw each other again. In fact, I don’t even remember how I know she had 4 sons.

I know one of my early loves drowned off the Norwegian Coast while swimming, away on vacation with his 2 sons. That remains vivid. But, what about the piano player who would serenade me each night with Gershwin? Or the college students waiters working summers in the borsht belt hotels, when only weekends would be free for us female employees to fraternize with them after they spent weeknights stupping the wives of the husbands who would only come up to the mountains on weekends.

What happened to the first boy I kissed, whose name I have forgotten.

What has become of most of the people I went to school with and worked with, who, despite seeing names on various reunion sites are no longer familiar?

You can’t go home again. I often look at life as standing on the outer rim of a carousel as it turns and I make fleeting contact with each horse and rider.

Vivid memories do remain of various people and various times. But my brain is like Swiss cheese, unable to see the complete picture. The fragments remain--the old photo album of my mind with its pictures fading and crumbling.