“I didn’t want to remember you that way.”
She said but how could she know?
She had put me on that plane years ago
And not seen me in decades
Yes the war had changed me
Made me more serious
Made me more cautious
And yet made me adventurous
Some of the changes that dogged me
Were visited upon my family for years
Unconsciously, unknowingly
But my family had to bear them nonetheless
Some of the changes were good
Able to withstand my efforts to extinguish them
Other changes were not recognized until much later
Those come out in who I am today
She would never completely remember me for how I was
She could mostly recognize me from what I am
Maybe she saw that in me before
Maybe it took a war for me to see it in myself
So much has gone on in my life since
So much in hers also
Yet today, we recognize each other for what we were
And for what we have become.
(Alice is my friend of 50 years who put me on the plane to the Vietnam War so many decades ago. Picture of me in Vietnam, 1972)
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