Remembrance and forgetting
Feb. 12th, 2009 01:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
missroseroseIt's funny how the sudden appearance of a set of pictures from your past can put you in a contemplative mood.
An old high school friend put up some pictures on Facebook from a decade ago, when I was a sixteen-year-old high schooler in Anchorage. Oddly enough, it's not the people in them so much as the setting that are really hitting me - most of them were taken in my best friend's house, where I spent a goodly portion of my child- and teenager-hood. I look at a picture taken in her family room, and remember how that rug felt under my hands and feet; I look at a shot of her couch, and the texture of the corduroy upholstery is suddenly in my mind. I see a picture of her kitchen and remember the whole set of decorative plates (just barely visible in the photo) that was on the countertop. I remember coming downstairs the morning after a sleepover, the sun streaming in through the patio doors. I remember dancing to Prince on the Romeo+Juliet soundtrack in the living room. I remember being so impressed in fifth grade at how she had a stairway with a banister you could slide down, and being sad as a teenager that I'd gotten too big to do the same. I remember making out with a guy friend of mine in the hallway, the carpet rough against my bare knees as I straddled his lap.
I remember, after I moved to Barrow my senior year, coming back to visit and staying with her. At that point her parents were making plans to sell the house and build their own somewhere else. I remember each day spent on that last visit being tinged with regret that I wouldn't be back. And I remember putting on my shoes to go to the airport and leaving that house for the last time, and thinking that that moment, more than any of the many goodbye moments during the move, was what felt like the end of that stage of my life.
Then I look around me now, at everything that happens day to day, and wonder how much of it I'll have forgotten a decade from now. How much will be completely lost, and how much will only be forgotten for a while - until a friend shares a set of photos with me, and it all comes flooding back.
An old high school friend put up some pictures on Facebook from a decade ago, when I was a sixteen-year-old high schooler in Anchorage. Oddly enough, it's not the people in them so much as the setting that are really hitting me - most of them were taken in my best friend's house, where I spent a goodly portion of my child- and teenager-hood. I look at a picture taken in her family room, and remember how that rug felt under my hands and feet; I look at a shot of her couch, and the texture of the corduroy upholstery is suddenly in my mind. I see a picture of her kitchen and remember the whole set of decorative plates (just barely visible in the photo) that was on the countertop. I remember coming downstairs the morning after a sleepover, the sun streaming in through the patio doors. I remember dancing to Prince on the Romeo+Juliet soundtrack in the living room. I remember being so impressed in fifth grade at how she had a stairway with a banister you could slide down, and being sad as a teenager that I'd gotten too big to do the same. I remember making out with a guy friend of mine in the hallway, the carpet rough against my bare knees as I straddled his lap.
I remember, after I moved to Barrow my senior year, coming back to visit and staying with her. At that point her parents were making plans to sell the house and build their own somewhere else. I remember each day spent on that last visit being tinged with regret that I wouldn't be back. And I remember putting on my shoes to go to the airport and leaving that house for the last time, and thinking that that moment, more than any of the many goodbye moments during the move, was what felt like the end of that stage of my life.
Then I look around me now, at everything that happens day to day, and wonder how much of it I'll have forgotten a decade from now. How much will be completely lost, and how much will only be forgotten for a while - until a friend shares a set of photos with me, and it all comes flooding back.
