Constellated Memory

I read the other day that currently the majority of those using Facebook are people from my generation (OK, a bit younger) instead of the teens and twenties most would think might make up users of a social networking medium.  The younger folk are Twittering (I will not call them "twits"...yet).

Facebook has been the vehicle of choice for several recent reunions I've had with friends from many years ago.  Just this weekend we attended an informal class reunion for my wife's high school class.  It was informal because no one did the traditional organizing.  Someone posted a message about getting together on what is the usual alumni weekend in her small Iowa town, and it grew.  Of course, when there are fewer than 40 in the class, it doesn't take much to "grow" a get-together.  Still, there were people there we hadn't seen in at least five years and some came from one coast or the other back to their Midwestern roots.

Although I didn't graduate from that town, I know many people from her class and from my own year.  I did run into a friend from my hometown.  We had been childhood friends and playmates along with our several brothers and her cousins.

This reminded me of thoughts I have had since my first college/fraternity reunion a few years ago.  These gatherings seem to be less reunions of people than reunions of memories.  We sit around reminiscing...very little "catching up" or getting to know the people we've become after forty years.

I like reuniting with old memories, for the most part.  I have to constantly check myself, however, to see if I'm remembering what actually happened or what I wish had happened or what I regret happened.  My brothers and I were talking with our mother years ago about our favorite Christmas.  She listened to the three of us for a few minutes and just started laughing.  That perfect holiday with several inches of immaculate snowfall, the best-wished-for gifts under the tree, the long-missed relatives arriving just in time, the mouth-watering dishes...was not one Christmas but the collected separate memories of several different years.

I think of mis-remembered events like this as "constellated" memories.  They are the brightest memories all gathered together to form the collection that is the best of times: the best Christmas, the best birthday, the best family vacation....

Today's technologies move us into the future at such a rapid pace, but, like powerful telescopes peering into the darkness at bright galaxies millions of light-years distant, perhaps the best thing they do for us is bring our pasts to light.  I hope that in our rush to tomorrow, we continue to reflect the very best of what has gone before and brought us to this time and these possible futures.

In the meantime, I hope everyone experiences frequently the bright moments that become your life's constellation.