Crossing a parking lot yesterday (when the weather is nice in Southeastern Connecticut we use any excuse to go outside. And there have been a lot of us outside in the last couple or three days), I passed a white Volkswagen Rabbit demurely parked between the lines, right where it should be and on top of its dashboard, over the gauges, atop the little bump behind the steering was another VW Rabbit, this time a model that was exactly the same car except it was orange. Another three steps brought me to the back end of the vehicle and there, on the shelf behind the rear window, again in the center, was another miniature model Rabbit, this time electric blue.
I don't really know the scale--my brother Kelly as a small child had Matchbox cars, as did my son Patrick, back when they were "Made in England by Lesney" (proudly stamped across the metal bottom; I never could figure out if that was the name of a company or a person). The doors opened and the wheels had feathered axles and there was always a little something special about each model, and if you had the trucks as well, and Patrick did, the panel door might slide or the dumper would tilt. They were real and they were small.
Now, the ones I see in the stores look a little Ost Bloc--pot metal fabrication and plastic wheels; not the ones you're gonna see on ebay as the Boomer's kids' kids, with no college funds or IRAs, try and fund the next sixty-years of their lives. We went from Fonzie to Ponzi in two generations, who could have imagined that?
The Rabbit(s) got me thinking, George, about the photos we carry in our wallets and purses (and often in our hearts and memories) as well as the pictures we save. "People take pictures of each other/And the moment to last them forever/Of the time when they mattered to someone"
I discovered, in a lock box where we keep our important papers on a shelf in a closet in our bedroom, photos of our children from when they were very small, but neither orange nor electric blue, but flesh-colored. I'm smiling as I type this, remembering the smile I had when I came across them-real and true buried treasure, in plain sight but still treasure.
Families are funny that way. It was just the two of us against the world, my wife and I, damals (Erich Fromm would be so pleased, though not necessarily because I invoked his name. Es tut mir leid, alte Kumpel). Then our son was born and, later, our daughter and every time we changed our lives, that change was reflected in the lives of our children as well. They grew up and grew into adults of their own. Our son has his own house with his own pictures on the walls in his hallway, I imagine, and maybe in a lock box as well. We see our daughter on weekends when she comes home from college-I think she's majoring in laundry.
Living daily with our children under one roof, I wondered when they'd ever grow up, which I think is something all parents do in moments of exasperation or as a response to yet another last minute, the school-bus-is-almost-here-and-I-need-a-check-for-an-outing-I-never-told-you-about-that costs-only-this-much-please? Of all the things to have wished for, it was the growing up wish that came true, go figure. As I've discovered when I look at the old photos, I didn't mean it and would take it back if I could, but I can't.
"Time it was, and what a time it was,
It was a time of innocence, a time of confidences.
Long ago, it must be, I have a photograph;
Preserve your memories, they're all that's left you."
-bill kenny
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