time is always time

last night was the global celebration of our friend laura's life.  all 6 of the inhabited continents were represented, with people on each one, remembering her, honoring her life, and being thankful that we were part of it.  it's pretty amazing - to be loved across the world.  it reflected her love of travel - and her ability to connection with different people.

in the afternoon i was trying to prepare for this as best i could, which was hard because i was interrupted a billion times, and i left my box of bits from my past in the attic of my parents house. i left my box of notes that had been passed, letters saved, rose petals gathered (seriously), yearbooks, and other collected items that bring me back to places and times that are special.  but i did bring a bag of pictures- a literal plastic ziplock bag of pictures.

this is typical of me.  i aspire to be a maker of scrapbooks, or at least picture albums.  i keep meaning to settle down and sort- to organize and write captions and record the place and time and date.  but. i don't.  instead i have bags and boxes filled with random pictures- and the thing is- i like it. 

yesterday, i fumbled through my life- in its disorder.  i went from zoe in san francisco at preschool- to me taking my first steps- to me and mike when we started dating - to my visit to rift valley academy in kenya when i was 17.  there were pictures of zoe nursing, then me going to the prom, then my best friend in peru at 14, then my grandmother. snippets of my time.

somehow, jumping around the years like this, felt more special- like i was finding little treasures- because each photo was a surprise.  life seemed full and rich.

i'm savoring the book 'gift from the sea' by anne morrow lindbergh. today i was reading about love and memory.  about the deep desire we have to freeze our love relationships in the first stages.  how we want to keep the initial passion, the first intense connection- and we don't accept the natural changes that happen as our relationship grows and matures.  we fear the loss of our beginnings, sometimes at the cost of missing the beauty in our depth.

looking through that bag of pictures- it's pretty obvious that change happens.  i have aged.  people have died. hair has grown and been cut; or fallen out for some. people have married, others divorced.  homes have been sold or moved from, trees have grown. babies have been born. jobs started. places have been visited.  the world has been traveled. change is constant- it's dependable- it's guaranteed.

there is so much beauty in the transience. each of those pictures, each holds a memory of a true and valid moment, as real as the moment of me sitting now on this porch, writing these words. there is nothing lost in the fact that it has past, that time has moved us, that change has happened.  maybe it's even become richer as it's antiqued.  maybe the value has deepened because it was and no longer is as it was.   her book reminds us of t.s. eliots words from his ash wednesday poem:

because i know that time is always time
and place is always and only place and
what is actual is actual only for one time and
only for one place, 
i rejoice in that things are as they are.

and really, that is what we are left with.
rejoicing in that things are as they are. now.  here. in this day before us.
that we make it real and vibrant and life giving- and worthy of remembering.
that we hold those we love who are gone, close; and those who we love, who have changed as we have, closer still.