I spend much of my time thinking about the past. Curiously enough, though, my interest remains professional rather than personal: The maintenance of friendships with childhood and high school pals has never been my strong suit. I prefer studying the past to cultivating it.
Several months ago, I gave a talk at the Library of Congress, at the conclusion of which a gentleman approached the podium asking about my last name. “You wouldn’t be related to Richard Joselit?” he tentatively inquired. When I resoundingly replied in the affirmative, saying that the man in question was my husband, the questioner, with mounting animation, told me that the two had been friendly many years ago, but had since lost touch. “Please give him my warmest regards,” he said, offering me his card and email address as well.
I dutifully reported this exchange, which greatly intrigued my husband. He also expressed a keen interest in picking up where he had left off ‘lo these many years and in short order arranged with his old buddy, whose name was Joel, to get together the next time both of them would be in Washington.
I tagged along to their reunion and watched in delight as Joel and Richard rehashed old times, reminisced freely about their summertime exploits, lamented the loss of red hair and lanky frame respectively, and gossiped about what had happened to this one and that. Although time and circumstance had markedly changed both men, they reverted back to their teenage selves within the space of an hour.
At a time when memory is all too often the stuff of recrimination and suffused with both anger and sadness, how wonderful to behold memory as a form of pleasurable exchange.
