My high school class is celebrating a significant anniversary this year and—thanks to social media—classmates are posting photos and memories I hadn’t thought about in years. The photos speak of innocence, joy, great expectations. Those were, after all, supposed to be the best years of our lives.
For some, they surely must have been.
Last night I got a Facebook message from a friend who seems to have photographed everything, every single thing from our childhood. “I came across a slide of you with your dog and me with my dog at a dog show,” she wrote.
I can’t remember a thing about it, and I told her so. “Was it our German shepherd?” I wrote back.
Yes, it was. Her name was Cheri. My father brought her home from who-knows-where one day. She was too thin from some digestive disorder we never had treated (vets and dentists were for other people, not us), but she was immensely friendly, loyal, and protective, and I loved her as I did so many animals who appeared out of nowhere and then disappeared just as mysteriously later.
Cheri remained with us after my father left. I thought that meant we’d have her forever, that I could count on her being there. There was a lot of comfort in thinking that.
I didn’t see much of my father after my parents separated. Mostly I’d see him when he came snooping around for something to sell so he could keep drinking. One day he showed up and said he wanted to take Cheri with him. I was terrified. We didn’t know how or where he was living, and if he couldn’t take care of himself, what would happen to Cheri?
That question still haunts me. He took her away that day, and I never saw her again. The next time he came around, he didn’t have her, and I didn’t ask why. I knew better by then.
My friend has no way of knowing this. She looks at the image and sees a two-dimensional happy memory that carries no real weight. It is light as air for her. She has every reason to think it would amuse me, too.
But nothing scares me more than a childhood friend with a shoebox full of memories I’ve been trying to outgrow for years. I am terrified of finding all my old lost things.
