It went so fast...

When my mother was getting toward the end of her life, she told me that remembering was like turning the pages of a book in her mind, each page was an incident she had experienced or person she had known. 

As I grow older I am beginning to understand what she meant. The time before sleep arrives or when sleep eludes me after midnight, my mind wanders to people I knew. My former husband, a childhood friend, a former business colleague, a young woman with whom I was close for a time but gradually, or quickly due to a disagreement, lost touch. Places I have lived and others I have traveled through often come to mind with startling clarity, each a page in my mind’s book.

In recent years I have attempted to live a mindful existence. To be present and aware of my surroundings as I walk the streets of Manhattan to and from work, running errands, or meeting a friend for dinner, the theatre, a movie or to see a new exhibit at a favorite museum. With the constant busy-ness of the city, being mindful is difficult. The mind wants to shut out the chaos and think about things other than the dog walkers and their charges straining at their leashes; the momentary traffic jam caused by a cab stopping for a fare; getting across Union Square quickly by weaving in and out of Green Market shoppers and vegetable stands; an ambulance screaming down the avenue toward Bellevue or Beth Israel Hospital; a squat Guatemalan in an orange traffic vest and helmet speeding through traffic lights intent on delivering a takeout order. Or simply noticing the Gramercy Park neighborhood in which I live and walk daily. The businesses closing, the new ones opening; new recruits at the Police Academy wearing crisp black suits, white shirts and ties, perhaps the first such dress most of them have owned since their first communion; the appearance of new ratings in restaurant windows, a sign that the inspector has made a visit; a wave hello to the Korean dry cleaner standing behind the counter waiting for customers; the cobbler in his small, narrow, cluttered shop, a table of unclaimed shoes for sale set up on the sidewalk.

Pushing away thoughts of the past – how I might have acted differently in a difficult situation or said something that would have turned the outcome another way – or thinking about the future – an upcoming meeting or expected conversation, planning the arrival of a friend from faraway, or simply dinner that evening – rather than the steps I’m taking, the air I’m breathing, the buildings and people and trucks and cars and parks I’m passing prevents me from living my life fully in the moment. We only have this one moment. The past is gone and the future does not yet exist except in our imaginations.

On her deathbed, my mother sighed and said, “It went so fast.” Did she live a mindful life or did she live always in the past and future? With responsibilities that I do not have – children and a husband – she seemed lost when we were all gone and she was left alone. There was only the past to think about and relive. The future was a calendar to be filled in and planned and thought about. The void of the here and now with no more family needs to take care of may have been the source of that sigh.

Five years ago I drove from Seattle to my alma mater, Stephens College, in Columbia, Missouri through the middle of the country before turning left to take a northern route home. Two years later I moved from Seattle back to New York City intent on getting rid of encumbrances, of possessions that were unnecessary. I traveled across the volcanic ridge from Washington to California, dove into the deserts of the southwest, rambled toward the Rio Grande in Texas and down to the Gulf of Mexico, turning left again and heading north into Missouri, Kentucky, a corner of Tennessee, and up toward the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Amish farmland of Pennsylvania, coming to rest in Chinatown.

I thought of both as journeys, not merely trips or travel. It was to be a time to remain present and aware of my surroundings as I passed through, stopped, listened, took photos and jotted down random observations. No music, no radio, nothing but my own thoughts about the immediate environment. All too often we allow our minds to relive the past and go forward into the future thinking about something that is coming up or something that has come and gone. I was mindful of catching myself when these thoughts crowded out the here-and-now and turned them off like a dripping spigot that demands attention.

Avoiding the interstate highways, I stayed on back roads, slowing the pace. Time was no object. I could be on the road as long as it took. The two-lane roads were once the main connectors between towns and cities before the interstate system was built, linking main streets miles apart.  

As a result, the pages in my mind come more clearly. Details are sharp. The slow turning of a vulture’s head as it sits on a fencepost and watches me pass by on a deserted road in southern New Mexico. A remote, ancient outpost of stucco and wood where Spanish priests attempted to introduce Jesus to Native Americans who already had their own rich traditions of higher powers. When they resisted the priests, the priests turned to genocide helped by others who wanted the land.

I remember driving into Hannibal, Missouri and the poverty that has consumed the once thriving port. Stores were closed, massive weeds the height of a man stood in doorways as roofs and ceilings and walls crumbled. The apocalypse had come to this small town and there was no way out. A man in a motorized wheelchair moved down an empty street and turned into a corner building with a flashing BAR sign in the darkened window. A young girl exited a large, turreted house, its paint peeling and the veranda sagging like an old woman sitting bereft in her once grand parlor. The slender young girl skipped and hopscotched on long brown legs toward the corner market, a small change purse tightly held in her hand.

These images are among the pages in my mind as I flip through the memories. There are not to be forgotten but I have resolved to be present, caught between the pull of yesterday and the blank canvas of a tomorrow that can only be planned but never assumed.