Installment # 1

There is a portion of a song lyric that includes, if not verbatim, the idea that “memories are time that we borrow to spend when we get to tomorrow.”  Well, I seem to have arrived at “tomorrow,” and am certainly enjoying the spending.  I hope that some of my memories will be like a gift to people of my generation and to younger people as they see their younger selves captured in my mind.  Via the Internet, people these days can look up anything in recorded history that they want to know more about.  The limitations are 1) that people need to be aware of an historical event or issue and to have their interests peaked to learn more, and 2) that such information cannot relate the feelings and perspectives of the people who lived through the event.  Facts cannot relate feelings.

The first limitation can be addressed through formal education.  The second may best be helped through well-written, well-researched historical narratives and historical novels.  These serve to paint pictures and convey feelings that help us understand at a more visceral level what really happened.  It is my hope that my written “Memories” will do some of each: raise awareness, peak interest, and capture feelings and attitudes.

Just arriving at age 70, I am reminded of one of the Simon and Garfunkel songs, “Old Friends.”  They were probably still in their 20s when they wrote the lyrics that included, “How terribly strange to be seventy.” I was in my 20s when I heard it and had to agree.  It sounded so distant and strange to think that, barring my untimely demise, I would someday be 70 years old and perhaps fit the description of one of the old men.  The lyrics are easy enough to look up these days, but here is a partial rendition:

“Old friends… sat on their park bench like bookends 
A newspaper blown through the grass 
Falls on the round toes of the high shoes of the old friends.”  Later they ask: “Can you imagine us years from today, sharing a park bench quietly? 
How terribly strange to be seventy” 

One of the great joys of being seventy is that I feel I have society’s “permission” to slow down and take it easy.  Consistent with my tendency to laugh at myself and see humor in things, I recently remarked that whereas I used to have to make excuses for not doing something I really didn’t want to do, now I am automatically excused.  During this transition to full retirement Sandy has lamented that I have no hobbies.  I have had to point out that writing is now a hobby of mine.  I didn’t know that would be the case, although over the years I did think to myself, “After all the reading I have done in my life, I wonder if I would enjoy writing.”  It is not an activity that Sandy can relate to, but it is my hobby. 

She has been doing things for years that I could not relate to (clothes shopping, gardening, etc), but I didn’t give her a bad time about it.  So now she should let me have my hobby, even if she can’t understand how someone could sit in front of a desktop computer and key board “all day”.  Of course, it is not “all day,” but I explain that I sat in front of a computer at a desk for the last 30 years, or so.  It is very comfortable and familiar to me.  Prior to computers, I used 13-column spreadsheets with pencil and eraser.  The transition to computer happened gradually, as the early computers and electronic spreadsheets became available in clients’ offices.

There are two basic approaches to writing one’s memoirs or autobiography.  You can wait until close to the end of your days and do it all at once, or you can start earlier and “peck away” at it a little at a time.  The downside of the first approach, of course, is that the end of your days may come abruptly and unexpectedly or, on the other hand, you may not have the faculties to think, remember and express what you want.  I have always been more of a “peck away” type.  In business and in other areas of life, I have always tended to overestimate how long a task will take and to start early and peck away at it. 

In any case, I’d rather call this document my “memories,” as opposed to calling it my memoirs or my autobiography.  For me, the term memoir conjures up scandal, etc, which is not where I am going with this.  The term autobiography makes me think of someone who was important enough to have had biographies written about him, but now wants to set the record straight, or someone who feels that his biography should have been written and, since it was not, has undertaken to do it himself.  I can relate more to the opening lines of Nicholas Sparks’, The Notebook:  “I am nothing special, of this I am sure. I am a common man with common thoughts and I've led a common life.” That didn’t discourage me from reading that story, so I hope it doesn’t discourage people from reading mine.

The downside of the “start early and peck away” approach is that I forget where I left off or where I was going with a thought.  I also am prone to repeating myself and find myself reviewing what I have already written and making modifications – either in what I have said, or in how I said it.  The other issue is that I may not still feel the way I did when I first wrote something, so am tempted/required to re-write it, all of which slows down the process.  I may spend too much time mulling over what I have already written, instead of forging ahead with new thoughts.  As an oldster I am fond of saying that if I repeat myself, at least my fellow oldsters won’t remember. But that refers to the spoken word, not the written word.  I suppose I flatter myself to think anyone is going to pour over what I have written carefully enough to catch me repeating or contradicting myself.