Of Time & Circumstance

Yesterday was my B-Day. 48 years on this spinning rock. It was a quiet day. I worked most of the morning and then gave myself permission to do not a damned thing but veg with some old DVDs. Lots of people wished me well on Facebook and that's always really nice. One person did something that knocked my feet out from under me. He sent me a photo, circa 1990. It's the most nondescript photo you could ever imagine, not even very good resolution, but it shook me. It's from when I lived in Berlin, something I talk about often here in the forum because it was my Halcyon Days of Youth. I didn't just visit; I lived there for several years. The nature of the job I did while living there made being a shutterbug something that many of us subconsciously shied away from, and cellphones where still science fiction in those days, let alone ones with cameras, so I have barely any photographic evidence of my time in Berlin.

Seeing that image was like an archeological find. Until yesterday I didn't know it even existed. It's just me walking on a street. My pals and I would go to the place in the photo to turn Deutschemarks into dollars or widdershins likewise depending on what the exchange rate was, trading for whatever was more favorable. The photo opened a file drawer in my mind that had been rusted shut for decades, one filled with memories of finding little hole-in-the wall pubs with my buddies, ones where GIs didn't go (we hated the "typical haunts") and meeting the people who went to those neighborhood bars, making friends with people our own age, and listening to stories from older Germans about the war and the things they saw, always amazed at how well the older folks spoke English, and how eager they were to share with you.

It's funny how a casual gift can seem like nothing yet mean so much.