Most of our memories can be triggered simply by the physical senses -- if we put ourselves somewhere that our brains recognize as familiar, up pops the memory. Thus, that odd sensation of deja vu when we least expect it.
Today, I took a mid-day walk. My resolution of sorts was to walk an hour a day, but recently I've settled on a compromise, which would be a half-hour a day. I just don't want to ascend one more waist size, you know? Going back a couple years, I was at 38, a tad above average for a man of my height (6') and build.
A little over 15 months ago, when I turned my car east on 20th and south on Potrero, heading to my office, I glimpsed the one I thought was my true love as she drove away in the opposite direction. She didn't see me, but her driver's window was down, and a cigarette was dangling carelessly from her lips.
We'd made love earlier that day, and my idea was that our impending two-month separation (which later grew to three) was only a blip on our journey to spending the rest of our lives together.
But I admit it gave me serious pause to see her heading in the opposite direction on Potrero, toward the Bay Bridge and her trek southeasterly. The woman I spied as we passed was a stranger, clearly savoring her freedom, the freedom of the road. Not a woman who would yearn to be back by my side, here in the Mission District of San Francisco. Nor one who would understand the tears in my sentimental eyes.
I very probably should have trusted my instincts at that moment, and let her go. But I didn't; instead I followed her there, twice, and for that I am grateful if only because I got to witness what every American ought to see, and that is the terrible gaping wound in our collective body which is the Gulf Coast post-Katrina.
Nevertheless, I had already lost this woman, as a friend of mine accurately predicted a few days later as we walked around Bernal Heights.” You need," he said, "a backup plan."
Long story short, I didn't have one, and I suppose anyone who has ever delved into my archives knows what happened to me subsequently. Which is where weight again enters this tale. After she left me I lost over 20 lbs. that winter. When she saw me on my second visit to Biloxi, even she said, "You look good, but you've lost enough already."
When she finally came back here, only to tell me we had to break up, and she left again, this time permanently, I lost another 15 or so. Along with the weight loss, I now realize, went muscle mass. No wonder last summer, at what turns out to be the last season of my softball "career" with my beloved Michigan Mafia, I was hitless (0 for 5) for the only time in my 29 playing years.
But by summertime I was rebounding, making new friends, including the female variety, and I started once again regaining my man-sized appetite. So, from my low point (167), I have gained something like 40 lbs the past 8 months, thus advancing from a boyish 34 waist to, well, pretty soon, that old 38.
Damn! What a roller coaster!
Anyway, back to my main point, the sensory basis of memory. Today on my attenuated daily walk, at noon, I encountered a black sky in formation. The weather forecast was for thunderstorms, even hail. Last night, a chunk of Telegraph Hill slid away under similar conditions. The weather here really is quite weird these days and nights, and very, very cold.
So, as I was nearing the destination I had chosen for this particular walk, I felt the first drops of wetness from above, and a wind-chill surge that urged me to turn around, pronto. Which I did.
As I was walking back to my office, a flood of memories suddenly overtook me. It was the last day, always...the last day at Ludington, the last day at Rolling Hills. Always we were one of the last to leave, probably because Dad wanted to fish a bit longer.
As his only son and companion, I was always there with him, along the river or out on the lake, but my mind was elsewhere. It was a melancholy feeling -- that sensation of the last to leave. The winds were urging us home. The Canadian Geese flew overhead, as they did today, no doubt setting off this particular set of memories.
I was in dreamland. Savoring the last few moments of a time already gone. Everyone else had left, soon we too would be departing.
Very much, I now realize, how it feels to have reached your ending years.
-30-
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