At times I consider myself a technophobe, steering clear of Internet surfing, tweeting, LOL cat videos and overly humorous or dramatic tragic stories. This is not to say I don't fall for the occasional sentimental heart tugger or sarcastic political commentary sent to me by husband, friends or daughter. My daughter admires her father for finding the most amazing factoids on the Net and being ahead of her with his pop cultural knowledge. This bond is not my bond, though I admit I envy their weird, nerdy communication. How grateful I am to have my family bale me out of my frequent blogging, e-mail, research and writing faux pas.
All of the above is not to say I am not fascinated with the possibilities the Internet presents. One day my husband, who loves geography and maps, was fooling around with“Google Earth. ” This is a site whose goal is to literally picture on the Net every residence in the United States. If we type in our address we can see our street, our block, our neighborhood, our city as if from up in the sky and we can then zoom in and observe our actual house and driveway with parked car, garden and avenue. My mouth dropped open as I asked Dan if he would zoom in on an old friend's house in another state. Soon there was her home with a dirt garden and several tarps covering her roof. This is a dear childhood friend whom I worry about, who, years ago, returned to living in her mother's 40s bungalow in the same small town we grew up in. She has no phone, and no longer replies to my letters. Like her mother, she has become an eccentric hermit.
The wonders of this Google Earth technology got me to thinking about its symbology. I have felt lately as if the whole of my past never even happened. Like Google Earth, when I zoom in on my childhood home, I wonder if I ever lived and grew up there. For the first eighteen years of my existence I resided on that corner, played in the neighborhood, walked ten blocks to the elementary school, attended the one and only junior high school and high school in my town. Currently in my sixties, my faded memories of these times give me the belief that another person had that childhood. It is as if I am looking through a telescope at the girl and the young adolescent I once was.
As a young woman I had dreams; I had ambitions that allowed me to be the first in my family to graduate from college, and took me several times to Europe to live, study and teach. But this era of my twenties seems also like zooming out with the browser from my childhood home to these other lands. I am the observer, standing faraway. Did I really study and live in Germany? Did I really return to teach English in a Mittelschule? I keep zooming skyward above the years of romance and marriage and birth, raising a child to adulthood and teaching, writing, slowly coming to the present.
Where am I and who am I in this moment of time? Where are my dreams and ambitions? Is this distant zoom-out effect a natural part of aging? I used to love creating photo albums, keeping souvenirs, ruminating over cherished crafted items from my beloved daughter. I've grieved more for the empty nest phase of my life than for any other stage. This grieving has taught me how the past can cause pain at its remembrance because whatever we have experienced cannot be revisited. Like Google Earth, I can zoom in on and away from the past, but I cannot hold this past in my present hands. With what Internet speed can we view all the way from the smallest flower to the wide expanse of the Milky Way; and similarly, I continue to marvel at how quickly I have reached the sixth decade of my living.
I never at the time thought I was in any particular phase or a stage: I was an adolescent or a young single adult woman forever. I was a teacher, a wife and a mother forever. But now it's as if these eras were filed and forgotten, and here I am. This part of my life, however, seems different. For like the zooming of Google Earth, I see all the other parts of my life behind me and as never before I know there will be an end. I have no idea about the number of earth years I'll be given. Will I be able to create a 60s segment with new dreams and ambitions I can look back on in my 70s and a 70s segment I can look back upon in my 80s?
Death played little part in my early and middle history. Now it rides on my shoulder wherever I go. And I continue to struggle with being just as daring and just as adventurous now as I was in my past. There are creaks and chinks in the armor, but my vibrant energy and spirit remain. I don't want to set myself aside from the societal mainstream because I have attained a certain amount of years. I want to create and give what and where I can. And so I shall... to the finite reaches of my personal outer space!
© 2012
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