Learning to speak "the past"

Learning to speak "the past"

Sometimes a phrase from a book lasts longer than the book itself. Such is the quote "The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there"from L.P. Hartley's novel "The Go-Between," published in 1953. There is something so poignant and true about this line - particularly if you are young when the past seems so different from today. But as we age we find ourselves visiting this foreign country more and more often, until we wake up one day and find that we are a resident of this foreign land. Time is our passport.

As a man of ninety three I am always shocked when I learn how many years it has been since my beloved sister died. In my mind it has been five years at best, not nearly thirty, and my childhood friend Eugene - can it be ten years when I still go to the telephone to call him at his Tremont exchange? Don't tell me that my composer friend Wally Harper died that many years ago. I will believe you out of courtesy but I don't truly accept that fact. And Richard Rodgers, mentor and friend, is still living at The Pierre in my mind's eye. And Uncle Frank, that loving truck driver who delivered diapers and laughter, and brother-in-law George, so gentle and kind if heaven exists it was created for him. My long dead parents still live around the corner at 78th Street and Third Avenue in my mind and any day now my beautiful mother will appear at my apartment to walk my dog Gus, giggle with my young sons, and bring her magnificent pot roast, burnt at the edges the way we have always eaten it. .

If Hartley was right and the past is a foreign country the older we get, and the longer we live, we visit this foreign country so often that we can speak its language and remember its customs without taking a course in the long ago - a time that is ever nearer. Historians can embrace the past through their studies, but ordinary people who are fortunate enough to live a long life - or even be blessed with a fine memory - live the past without needing a language course, or a tour guide - freedom and justice were words to live by - not to be mocked. So let us honor that foreign country - the past while respecting the folkways of the present - although I must say I prefer a stranger from my past calling me Mister to some kid calling me Bro. And "How ya doin?" to any AI greeeting.

What we get from making this foreign country our home is a connection with what we have lost - sorting the valuable from the detritus - it is no foreign country - the past is our homeland. And it is because of the past - with its push toward progress - that I can recall it, warts and all, as a beautiful place.

And I can hope that we can recapture the best of it. Our current president who barely speaks English, and whose real language is Corruption 101 and the basics of bigotry, would never be understood by our Founding Fathers. They had their faults but they did not boast or celebrate them. Good Lawd, he would not be understood by my own mother and father who accepted the constitution and our laws as a given, not as documents that were tossed in a WH trash basket.

If you mentioned Alligator Alcatraz to my mother she would say "I never go to horror movies, I prefer a good romance with Bette Davis. or Ingrid Bergman." And truth is, if you live long enough, you will feel the same way. Change Bette to Taylor Swift but the story is the same - grace and civility will always matter - they never died but they have changed their shape - and if they are sleeping now it is our task to awaken them. We are still residents of that foreign country for the past lives on in our present. That foreign country is ours - and to visit it all we need do is remember our courage, and start the voyage back to the country of our best selves.