A photo from three dozen years ago
As little as 15 or 20 years ago, photographs were somewhat more precious. Before digital photography became common, photographs for most were of vacations or special occasions, as buying and developing film tended to be expensive. So we took photographs hoping for the best, taking rolls of film to be developed after trips, waiting a week or so, and opening the sealed envelopes of prints with the eager anticipation of an awards show. Some photos may have gone into albums, though most ended up in drawers or boxes that moved from domicile to domicile, gradually migrating to basements or attics. Most of life was preserved only in memory, though to be honest, the colors were better and didn't fade over time.
Last week, an old friend from college sent me scans of a couple photos he ran across from over thirty years ago. Some I have very little recollection of where we were or what we were doing. One is above. Somehow I do remember exactly that moment, three dozen years ago. It was near the ferry terminal in Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts. The sun was setting. A group of us who went to college together were waiting for the ferry back to the mainland from Martha's Vineyard after spending a long weekend on the island. I was going to start my first engineering job after college as soon as I got back home. I recall feeling that I was an alien at a place like Martha's Vineyard, as many of the folk I saw there looked like they could have been in Ralph Lauren ads. Plus even then it was a retreat of the elite.
The photo triggered memories of of long ago. I had little sense of myself at the time. As is common in youth, many choices I made in life reflected others' priorities and visions rather than my own. I was comfortable with the easy, avoided the hard. It took moving away from the east coast and then a couple bouts of therapy to figure out who I was, a long process. I confess a little jealousy sometimes of people I knew then and have met later who apparently knew who they were and wanted to be while students in college and followed that path, but then I also prize the path I've made to discover who I am.
What would I tell my younger self in the photo? That within 4 years I'd abandon the field of engineering to become a schoolteacher? That I would spend much of my working life involved in education, teaching in several states, helping start a school and save another? That I would go back to school in 8 years to get another degree, in music, and make part of my living performing music and working in arts administration? That I'd sing in venues across the US, and, on a whim, with monks outside the Aedicule in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre? That I would meet the love of my life in 20 years (a long 20 years, but totally worth the wait). That I would watch my father die (and be hiking on the other side of the country when my mother died). That I would wander around the world from the Arctic Ocean to the Sea of Galilee, from European streets to Cambodian jungle? That I would hike to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and wander the foothills of the Alps, Andes, and Himalaya? That I'd volunteer at the National Zoo for several years and, with my wife, at a conservation area in Costa Rica as well for several years? That, though I would drift away from my friends of the time, that I would find new friends and colleagues that I treasure, and would actually reconnect with old friends as I became middle aged. I'm not sure the guy in the picture realized how lucky he was before and how lucky he would be.
My friend Al found other photos apart from the one above. Photos from get togethers of college friends in various places from Maryland to Massachusetts. Some somewhat baffling. Some somewhat embarrassing. Some somewhat charming. Such is nostalgia, but living is better, even if it's not easily or relentlessly documented.
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