The people who took a peek at yesterday’s post with the pictures of David Then and Now stuns me. The people who took a minute to send a greeting! One hadn’t seen David since 6th grade and there’s the beauty of Facebook where I posted the link. Facebook can all but make the dead live again.
150 years ago my people came here from Ireland to escape starvation. When there was a get-together to say goodbye to one of these émigrés, they called it an American wake; that’s how sure the departing one was that he would see these people no more, no more alas in this world. They’d be as good as dead to him. Now, with Facebook, even people you haven’t seen in 40 years can be found. Plus the fastest-growing demographic on FB is the 55-to-65-year-olds, of whom there are, shall we say, zillions. (Remember that mock headline from The Onion? “Internet Crashes! Photos of Boomer Grandchildren Cited!”?) With Facebook you can resurrect unbelievably detailed memories of that year-end outing with the middle school band, say, or sort through old misunderstandings with a person, or send someone pictures of his younger self at a time when he might really need to remember the child that still lives inside him,
Facebook let me show you David who I’ve been talking about in my column since I launched the thing the year old Ronnie Reagan propelled his big pompadoured head to the podium to take the Oath of Office. And today it lets me show you this glimpse of two family members having that birthday supper at a tapas joint called Toro the other night.
Who cares? Anybody? Nobody? It doesn’t matter. We need to tell our stories. And anyway who knows? Maybe God really does have the hairs on our heads all counted in just the same way Site Meter counts the hits on this blog. Maybe we really ARE just one big village, eating in sidewalk cafés and watching the sun set and bending to greet one another’s dogs.
A very nice thought, for me anyway, on this raw rainy day in early June.
EXIT ONLY 