memories......

ok, so while i was in high school....barbra streisand and robert redford made a tear-jerker of a film.....the way we were.........omg.......one could not watch this film from start to finish without a kleenex or two.....so sentimental......a story of 2 people who were destined to spend time together, but not eternity......the song from the film won an oscar......barbra sang it........memories, light the corners of my mind...misty water-colored memories...of the way we were.......and this song comes to mind as i ponder the notion of memories.....just who owns memories.......can we really say...those are not your memories, they are my memories............when both people have a recollection of the same event, or movie, or written piece of prose.......of collective events such as a childhood.......they cannot be split apart and divided and carted off in sections...like goods at an estate auction........even if the photographs are pasted into absurd grey cardboard albums....the memories persist.......and when one says that these are not your memories, they are mine.....perception is the key.......that is why there are 4 gospels, because even the holy could not agree on what was truth.......each remembered things a bit differently..........such assertions mean little to those in the here-and-now.....it is only when there is no longer physical record of memory that this things become more delicate and precious.....when the photos burn or the letters we thought we kept cannot be found...or the mainframe crashes and 4 years of musings are toast......i was once at the supper table with relatives discussing the past....whereupon my aunt blurted out a family myth about her cousin, who was present.....whereupon he stated the truth as he remembered it....in that it involved him and his own adoption and birth records...and my aunt disagreed.....like her memory would/could trump the memory of the person directly involved and present at all events.....i have oft admitted to making up my own truths as i go along......i believe that all of us who value sanity do this as a way to keep ourselves emotionally whole.......but then, i cannot speak for others...only for myself......this evening i read a lovely article in my spouse's college alumni publication...about an alumnae from the college of wooster who turns 100 years old this week.......and i was impressed about her outlook......a woman who finished college in 1927.....and worked a year before 'settling down to marry and have a family' the way culture dictated at the time.......and i think to myself...who owns her memories...her family, the college, those who read the article and were inspired by it.....are her memories now splintered and dispersed...like so much nitrogen in the atmosphere.......can her words, once said, be ever taken back.......having been touched by her i am changed, to some extent......galvanized with the resolve to promote the higher education of all women........there are still women out there who, if they were to go to college, would be the first in their families to do so.....but i digress from memories........and ownership of memories.....and blogging...and are the things that i ponder my own to ponder, or because they involve others somehow off limits........i almost gave up this blog several years ago, due to sincerely felt horror swelling up from those i love.....but i was persuaded to plow on......by the loyal opposition, who inspired the blog in the first place........and blog on i shall......as long as i have memories i can call my own to commit to the great abyss.......memories may be beautiful and yet,...the song goes..... what's too painful to remember, we simply choose to forget...and so its the laughter, we will rmember, whenever we remember the way we were......gosh, i wonder if the fellow i saw the movie with all those years ago ever thinks of me when he hears the song.....does he own the memory?....do i own it......does it matter.............