I have known you a long time, most of the years of my life. When you lie in bed with the veins in your legs throbbing in pain after twelve miles of hiking, please don't interpret my smiling at you as a sign of indifference. I'm thinking about how those legs have walked thousands of miles with me through trails in the Grand Canyon, Arches, Mount Rainier, Yosemite, Yellowstone, Great Smoky Mountains, and Acadia, and the streets of New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Athens, Paris, Rome, Berlin, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Oslo, Helsinki, and Valletta. When I laugh apparently out of nowhere, I'm recalling your reactions when your father or mine said something inappropriately yet wickedly funny during family gatherings. When I seem distant as you talk about something we need to get done, I'm not shirking a responsibility. I'm reflecting on the many accomplishments and setbacks we have shared, and how all these events have brought us to his beautiful place. And when tears well in my eyes at the end of Casablanca, Death in Venice, Paris, Texas, El Norte, Cinema Paradiso, or Central Station, I cry not for the fate of the these fictious characters but for losing family members and friends who can no longer share their radiance with me, for those poor, humble, kind people who have served me and will never reach my status, and for those who have helped me throughout my life, who have changed my life for the better, without receiving more than a thank-you from me.
So tell me, what's so bad about living in the past? Don't you?
