Rear View Mirror’s Reflection(James brown) Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards*. Soren Kierkegaard*

Young, it was so short a time ago. Then it was forever.

Old, when did it become so? Was it when pop culture figures were unfamiliar, when more dead were known than alive, when none my age were present at an event?

Was it, when a senior discount given, TSA let me pass with shoes on, or was it when I preferred to sit than stand, stay home at night, take an afternoon nap? Old, it never seemed to happen but suddenly did.
Four scour years flipped like yesterdays. I splashed my way through high and low water marks. Now in a calm pool of reflection, I’m an inconspicuous Q-tip among the throng.

Some old, flutter pretensions, brag of yesteryears, even lewdly flirt. They attract sympathy at best.  They say, 80 is just a number, the new 60. It matters not, what I do or think. My earth trek’s time consumed can’t be denied, old age is now my stage. I accept I’m old and bask in reality’s final phase. Why lie? I’ve spent a life doing so.

To understand, you need to know where I’m, “coming from”. I’m an in-between, product of both the 1950s and 60’s but not the 70’s, the decade of crazy. Born on January 1, 1944, at the eve of the baby boomers, the depression and war were over but imprinted in adult minds and re-told. The tidal wave of boomer demands began shortly later. While closer to being a boomer the couple of years missed was a vast generational outlook. I graduated from Santa Clara High School in 1962 and had no idea what marijuana was. By my junior year in college, it was everywhere.

While time's minute hand moves faster as the clock's spring winds down, I'm no longer rushed.  I enjoy dilatory rituals of morning coffee, read books, watch movies and tend a garden, once too busy to do. There’s no need to rush. I’ll hear the Banshee’s wail soon enough.

There's a special pleasure too. I wallow among the patina of memories. There, in my recollection midden, I live my life anew. Candid aged introspection unveils the me, I never knew.

I stumbled into adulthood, made decisions deemed unimportant when made that congealed into my life’s portrait. By the fireplace's warmth and sipped whisky’s comfort, I re-write my life with aged insight.

As I do, I wonder how it became so, my life's string of events.
Life's twists and turns have taught, what once I knew, are things untrue. Late at night, awake before sleep, unable to, the past drifts randomly before me. With the scrutiny of age’s honest reflection, my life’s story requires revision from the myth I thought was true.

I was selfish, hypocritical, libidinous, manipulative, vindictive, even mean. I lied to and betrayed those loved, even myself. I loved me most, hard to accept, more so to say, but it’s true. While admitting guilt, I prevaricate.  I admit guilt of humanity, not wickedness.

My memory is skewed from lapses and personal lies, but I recollect as best I can. Are my revisions subject to future review? All history is. Each day lived, I failed to comprehend what was happening, who I was, what it meant. I amend my past with honest hindsight, yet others remind me of shared events I can’t recall. They in turn often fail to recollect what I say we did.

What really happened?

The mind distorts experiences as they occur based on what our perceived “is” is, then deletes, twists and inserts memory banks to fit that “is”. This becomes our metamorphosed past.

I try to be accurate, but my memory keeps shifting. It’s not just events that change but my role in them. It wasn’t really that way, or was it? Reality, is it what’s believed back then, now or tomorrow? I don’t know, a conundrum.

As I sort out my life’s jumbled past, I try to decipher if the experiences that make up my life’s portrait occurred randomly or were predetermined.

Einstein's theory, space and time are interchangeable but warped by matter, means the past is now as is the future and time's an illusion caused by our movement in space, now being our current location.
Is movement through space after the big bang, therefore, predestined by physics? Is every experience a picture frame in God’s movie production, the reel capable of turning forward or backward?  Is everything we do part of God’s scripted one-way road trip from birth to death? Is our life span an illusion of time as we move through space? 

It appears so.

Or are our lives an infinite quantum array of potential universes, a passage through doors we chose to open, whimsically at times passing through more than one at the same time, others with deep introspection, our selections resulting in the eventual universe we inhabit from among an infinite number of possibilities?

It appears so.

A predetermined life or one of free will, how do we distinguish which it is?

Take your pick. Our life’s either a movie show predetermined by God, or an unrehearsed stage play with infinite alternatives. I suspect it’s a little of each where the laws of physics break down in our quantum micro worlds.

Yes, I have regrets. If honest we all do, but did we have a choice to make them? I should ‘a, could ‘a usually breaks down to I did what I could on honest reflection.

They say two things are unavoidable, death and taxes. I add another, change. While it may be glacial or volcanic, it’s constant. Even our past changes, a rear-view mirage skewed in the fractured light of recollection as we edit it. Past hues are adjusted to fit what we think now, not back then.  What we think now, will change to fit our future memory.

I couldn't imagine when young what is now back then. Microwave ovens, personal computers, cell phones, the internet, and social media were not predicted. Instead, flying cars, house-cleaning robots, and trips to Mars were expected.

Tobacco was big, you’d walk a mile for a Camel and doctors pitched cigarettes on TV. At the end of every grocery store aisle was an ashtray with little ones on theater and airplane armrest seats. Intellectuals smoked pipes, big shots cigars, most cigarettes and very few chewed.

Polaroid, Fax, Beta, VHS, floppy disks, one-hour photos, transistor radios, and the sexual revolution came and went without a hint in their predictions.

Back then, roofs were adorned with aluminum antennas, TV’s were black and white, kids watched Howdy Doody and the Mickey Mouse Club. At night adults watched Lucy and Rickie sleep in separate beds, Father Knew Best, Ed Sullivan frown at guests and Milton Berle bored the rest.
                                                       
Instead of ubiquitous cell phones, a black rotary phone sat squat on its table in the center of the house. Its loud ring startled but gave no hint of who was calling. Used by all, arguments ensued when you talked too long and long-distance was done at rare bequest.

Kodak’s bulb flashed in your face, for a moment you couldn’t see. Then the picture taken took a week to view.

Music played in jukeboxes that glowed pastel colors and played three selections for a quarter.

Cars were American, each year's model an awaited event. Fins were in but Edsel was out. Studebaker, Packard, Hudson, and Nash were auto choices for a few.

Only airplanes had seat belts, everyone walked to the gate and there a machine sold flight insurance.

Banks were open from ten to three. Stores closed Sunday, mom served the week’s dinner best while everyone else except preachers took a rest.

The front porch door was left unlocked, paperboys threw newspapers to it, the milkman delivered bottled milk on it, the mailman dropped letters in its slot and pesky salesmen rang its bell. Monday’s women washed and hung clothes to dry by wooden pins, when backyard burning was forbidden.

Boys played marbles, flew kites, made models and read comic books. Girls played hopscotch, skipped rope, had tea parties and pushed buggies with dolls. Every kid tried a hula-hoop, the family played Monopoly, checkers, and cards. Baseball was big, football too, golf was played by a few, and soccer was a foreigner’s game.

Children all got measles, polio haunted summer and moms marched for Easter Seal dimes. Doctors advertised cigarettes and you’d walk a mile for a Camel.

The service station hose bell dinged when you drove to the pump, a man rushed to be of service, he washed the windows, checked the oil, water, and air as he pumped your gas, and you paid in cash.

The station fixed cars on its hydraulic hoist, sold only cigarettes and soda in vending machines and gave free maps and coupon stamps as boot. Each had a phone booth that demanded a dime but you could talk to the operator and call collect. 
                
Gay meant cheerful, pot was a cooking utensil and porn wasn't a four-letter word, Catholic Mass was said in Latin, the Pope was Italian, Russians were the enemy, China was forbidden red and Santa Clara Valley was an agricultural wonderland.

A woman's place was at home, her work never done. A man’s place was at work, his job a life sentence. Dinner, was a family affair, cooked by mom, served in the dining room and dad sat at the head. The day’s events were discussed but mention of sex was taboo.

It was a different world, though not so long ago, difficult now to comprehend.

Then the "pill" changed women, computers, silicon wafers, integrated circuits, and the internet changed the world and my world, Santa Clara Valley suddenly became Silicon Valley.

Change, the original love it or leave it. I’ve accepted it as every generation has its day.

Those that live it, say they’d not have it another way. I’ve had my day, blessed with seeing two. Like those before and coming after, I traveled the era I think best. Only those my age can relate to what I say. To the young, I'm a geezer but I don’t care. I hope they can say, their era was best, once their four score passes too.

In old age, I'm looking backwards to understand, yet living forward.

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