Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. They were together again. I was together with someone so special, we spent the night together. It was the first of many, but didn't outlive our teenage dreams about forever. Parents, time, and hormones took care of that.
But for that first night, it was the song, Our House, that played over and over on the phonograph, yes, one of those antiquated vinyl-playing wonders that could play an album, yes, that's what they were called, over and over again, until it was imprinted on my memory forever.
1971. It was a very very very good year. In love, happy, innocent campus love affair, with all the mysteries of companionship, friendship, new love, painful separations and finally, the ultimate end of forever.
Everyone has that "first" remembrance. Mine was just one of those. But it is mine. To this day, I will remember that night forever. And that song.
Today, fast-forwarding 44 years, it is as clear as the blue ocean water off Green Turtle Cay in the Bahamas. One of my favorite places in all the world. It is as outstanding as seeing La Boheme for the very first time in a dark, dank movie theatre in downtown West Palm Beach. As searingly memorable as where I was on November 22, 1962.
Life's avenues and journeys are never imaginable at 19 years of age. No one really knows what will happen 10, 25, or 50 years from that age. It is simply unimaginable. It is the future and has nothing to do with the in-the-moment zen world where we live in that "almost adult/still child-like" state of mind.
It is almost an out-of-body experience to remember those magical times, the almost dates of two people with hardly any money, and a good friend who would loan them a car occasionally so they could drive around North Miami and pick up hamburgers at Bob's, charging it to their account there, religiouslypaid at the end of the semester.
Trips to Haulover Beach to watch the moon rise, and other pastimes that have no monetary cost, but will make for priceless memories when we are old. Older than now? Yes, that is now the frightening Godzilla monster that haunts our dreams, and how did we get here, to this 60-something time zone where everything speeds up and tumbles down a rickety time road to the end. And the end is what? But I digress.
This morning, even though I don't work on Friday, but have until just recently, my musical alarm goes off even though I protest and try to curl myself in a tighter, sheet-covered mummy form to disregard it. Still, it cuts through the spider webs of sleep and wakes me. The same song. Our House. It even applies to me now. Two cats in the yard, (check– actually three), life used to be so hard (yep! cancer and heart disease have haunted this house), now everything is easy cause of you (that's true too), except it is with someone else, someone who has shared 43 years of my life with me. Not that first one but, ironically someone I knew before that "first" someone. We were childhood frenemies from the ages of eight and nine-years old.
Those unimaginable avenues and journeys have led me to places I never thought possible and my song has stayed with me for the entire trip.
Memories can only be made. They can only be remembered. They can never be remade and they ultimately can be forgotten. And that someone so special? He is one of my oldest, dearest friends and always will be. He knows who he is.
Paul Simon said, "Preserve your memories, they're all that's left you."
I have started to follow those instructions.
