Perceptions. What's Up With Them?

"Mem'ries

Light the corners of my mind

Misty water-colored memories

Of the way we were"

I've noticed how perceptions subtly shift over time, or  even drift.  When I contrast my daughter, Tracey's recollections with mine, she remembers summer evenings in Denver as warm, even balmy, while I remember July as the thunderstorm-laden month.  I recall temperatures beginning their slow descent from summer-highs as early as Labor Day. Too, I remember wearing light sweaters at dusk in the summer while she remembers sleeveless evening chasing friends in neighborhood competitions.

The world seems bent on going to hell in a handbasket, as one of my past Pastors predicted.  How else to explain round-the-clock national and global conflicts and undeclared wars; mercurial weather patterns that show no signs of stabilizing; wildfires, now occurring in the East, West, Midwest, and South---all over a worn nation? Look at tornadoes erupting out of the blue, floods on the Plains,  and hurricanes wreaking one-two wallops of devastation and destruction.  I remember four seasons and what to expect as one ended and the new one made its debut.  I suppose Tracey's memories will carry as many contradictions from those of her birth children as hers and mine reflect.

While I hesitate to parrot the nostalgia of my parents who regaled us with the "good old days," in retrospect and by comparison, the "yesteryears" rank much higher on the happy-and-safe yardstick.  Instead of "Duking it out" with the neighborhood bully, our fathers gathered around radios and listened to the spirited commentary describing a heavyweight fight as  Joe Louis or Jersey Joe Wolcott annihilated an opponent. "Can it be that it was all so simple then? Or has time re-written every line? If we had the chance to do it all again, tell me, would we? Could we?" 

Churchgoers released incipient or pent up conflict and turmoil when they sang Sunday Worship's opening hymn, "Precious mem'ries, unseen angels, Sent from somewhere to my soul; How they linger, ever near me, And the sacred past unfold. In the stillness of the midnight, Precious sacred
 scenes unfold."  Back in the day, peace was secured and maintained intentionally.  Intentionality is not a  new, 21st-century concept.  Intentionality bespeaks survival in an unfair, lopsided world for many disenfranchised citizens. 

Intentionality propelled thousands of Southern Blacks to seek a safer life in the North.  Intentionality hid its tears and fears in the reality of "Strange Fruit," unpunished lynchings.  My ancestors turned their faces toward the "Promised Land," the North Star. The North beckoned. They responded, loaded up old, decrepit cars, hit Route 66 and made it to the Midwest, primarily to Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin, welcomed homes,even with all their uncertainties, but home! Both Gladys Knight (and the Pips) and Barbra Streisand memorialized yesterday's bittersweet nostalgia.

Mem'ries, may be beautiful and yet 
What's too painful to remember,
We simply choose to forget 
So it's the laughter  
We will remember 
Whenever we remember...
The way we were