Disappearing Act

My principal is retiring at the end of this year. She hired me four years ago and working under her has been very rewarding both professionally and personally. We have a lot in common even though she's close to forty years older than I am. I remember being in the hospital back in January when Jordan was born and texting my principal. I mean, how cool is it that a sixty-something year old texts. That's just how she is. There have been many afternoons over the past four years where I've sat in her office and talked about music, our fascination with cults, or just listened to her stories about her life. She tells great stories. Two days ago, we talked in her office after school for one of the last times, I'm sure. Our topics ranged from computers to Charles Manson and finally to losing touch with people from our past.

What was most interesting about the last part of our conversation was how different our perspectives were on people who we haven't seen in awhile. Even though there's a considerable age gap between us and she's from another generation, it's never felt that way until that afternoon. She was talking about how many people she has lost contact with from her past. We both agreed that it was like people just vanish from the face of the earth when you lose contact, but the difference in my generation and her generation is the means of communication. With the evolution of the Internet and my space and blogs and basically any search engine, you can find people that have "vanished" and pull them back to the present if you want to (and if they want to). Who hasn't ever been bored and decided to plug random names from the past into Google or my space and see what pops up? She told me she wouldn't really know where to begin with something like that.

The more I've thought about it, though, the more I question whether or not this access to finding people is a good thing. Sometimes when people "vanish" or just fade away over time it's best to leave them there. I'm beginning to think that certain people only fit in certain contexts of my life and to try and bring them back or reconnect with them would leave me disappointed. I think there's a circle of friends and family that stay with you throughout your life. And every time you see them, you pick back up from where you were the last time you were together. Then there are others who fall along the way or disappear and it's best to let them go. I've tried to hold on to more than a few people for nothing more than nostalgic purposes and, more often than not, we seem to lose touch anyway.

I guess that's why our brains are designed to remember emotional experiences. The people that are worth remembering will always be somewhere in my mind. And over time parts of those memories will pull a disappearing act, but the ones that are most important will stay where they are. The people who have vanished are somewhere else now and I'm sure (if I was important enough) I've got a place somewhere in there memories as well.