On Sunday, I visited with extended family and was struck by a visceral discovery :
you can’t turn back the clock.
Life moves on, people change and it’s the
natural Order of Things.
Then last night, on the birthday of my
childhood neighbor, I had a sort of epiphany: I finally realized, understood,
FELT that the past can never come back. I think a part of me had always been
longing to go back to the Antibes days. I vaguely thought: “If I go back to
Antibes, my family with me, we could pick up where we left off…”
For the first time, I realized it cannot
happen. It’s where we were, at that
time, at that age, with those people. Some of the people live on but they
are no longer the same. Antibes itself has moved on. My childhood can never be
recreated or revisited.
But what I can do is love it, love the people
in it, and be intensely grateful for the privilege of having lived it: Antibes
in the 70’s, family life, my beloved school, playing with my brother, the
beauty all around us. Creating memories to be cherished for a lifetime.
I thought Time didn’t really exist. But Something flows, and it flows in one
direction only.
I feel like I’ve grown up. I have finally
accepted that there is no going back. But once, it was real. I lived IT, I
shared IT and it’s in my heart forever.
Antibes. As I knew it. (Photo Credit: Lesley Stern)