It’s easy, you think, to remember being
young—part child and animal, before you learned
what it meant to be human. I mean before
you did what you were told to be a good human
the kind of human your mother would be
proud to say she created. You owe
your mother that, you think, once you’re old
enough to understand, gratitude, once
you’re old enough to recognize guilt
and once you’re old enough to value
what it means to have empathy.
But it turns
out being young isn’t easy to remember
when you try because so much of your memory
is fueled by black-and-white photos
moments between breaths when someone,
probably your mother decided she needed
to keep your image forever. Who knows why,
as forever isn’t real, either, if you are talking
about a human lifespan. So, the memories
you have of being young are just a reimagining
of something now intangible.
All this is to say
whatever you remember about that time in your life—
you were probably never as good as you thought
or as bad, and you weren’t even as you thought,
you were something else entirely and that something
else is the exact part you will never be again. So
remember, your remembering is serving one purpose,
to help or hurt your nostalgic heart: nothing you recall
from those days is or ever was the way you remember
it, which is the reason you’re able to go forward,
reinventing whatever is needed to carry on.