Postcards From Across the Pond

Some months ago, I finished The Patriarch Diaries—my attempt at a family history/reminiscence—and I’m glad I did. Several times, as I slogged toward the finish line, I noted to my wife that the past was slipping away from me almost as fast as I could write about it. It’s not that my memories are gone, it’s that they no longer feel relevant.

I’m nearing the completion of my 70^th orbit around the sun. That’s a lot of time, and a fair distance, especially if you consider that the earth is rotating while orbiting the sun, and that our solar system is orbiting the Milky Way, and that the Galaxy itself is hurtling thought space; that must put me trillions of miles from the point in space where I began. (Unless you’re a Flat Earther, in which case, I’m still in the exact same spot. But you do you.)

It’s also a lot of memories to carry around. It was easy when I was younger; up to my early teens I could roll my life back—like a movie in reverse—spiralling through the years, recalling everything I had done. When the spiral of years became too heavy, I started a journal (which I continue to keep) so the memories wouldn’t slip away. But when shifting through old photos and journals while researching The Patriarch Diaries, I had to shake my head in disbelief at the things I’d done and the places I’d been that I had no memory of.

This did not, however, instil a sense of lost, or sadness, or regret. The forgotten episodes, as well as those I remember, are shadows of the past. A Now that, once experienced, faded away, to be replaced by another Now, and another.

Because Now is the only thing that really matters. My childhood was filled with many Nows I can no longer recall, but those I do were, for the most part, good. My 20s, 30s, and early 40s were a stew of Exhausting Nows mixed sparsely with Contented Nows and liberally sprinkled with Nows I used to regard as Good but, in my Now Now, look back on with regret. There were even Nows that were so discouraging I contemplated the option of forfeiting my future Nows because I couldn’t see them getting any better. Fortunately, those thoughts were fleeting and not acted upon and, eventually, my Nows improved to the point where they were very good indeed.

Those Good Nows initiated my trip to Ireland which led to my relocation to Britain (and, not incidentally, marrying my wife).

Since that time, my Nows have been consistently Good. So good, in fact, that they tend to fuse together, fooling me into believing that things we did a decade ago happened last year, which makes me worry that life is passing too quickly. My only remedy is to not take my Now Nows for granted, keeping in mind that there are Future Nows—especially the Now that ends all Nows—that will not be quite as pleasant as my Current Nows.

As with anyone desiring to enjoy life, I am able to put those thoughts aside as I go through my daily Nows, grateful that The Patriarch Diaries sits on my shelf as a physical book (a really big physical book). This provides both satisfaction in having finished it, and relief in never needing to read it again. The disconnect between that boy roaming the fields and forests of the erstwhile Lindenwald estate, and the young man with a growing family and a mortgage, struggling to understand what it took to be a good father and responsible adult, while making every conceivable bad decision in the process, is so palpable I may as well be living someone else’s life.

I wonder if that’s normal, if, after all these years, the weight of the memories is so heavy even my journals cannot hold them. Ultimately, I suppose it doesn’t matter; it’s just another of those things you need to avoid thinking about if you want to continue enjoying your Now Nows.

And, if I ever do get the urge to re-connect, I can always crack open The Patriarch Diaries.