THEY DO NEED MAPS

It was December 1941. Pearl Harbor had just been attacked. We were stunned and scared. Benny Goodman and his orchestra went into a Hollywood studio with 21 year old Peggy Lee to record an old Rogers & Hart song which had suddenly taken on new meaning:

"Some things that happen for the first time/ seem to be happening again/ and so it seems we've met before/ and laughed before/ and loved before/ but who knows where or when."

Deja Vu..? Haunting...? Yearning...? Mystery...?

All of these and more. It can happen anytime, anywhere, anyway. Perhaps the best thing to do with the feeling is to ride with it. Let it scoop you up and take you to where it wants. Usually that's to a time when -- in this very same place -- something significant happened. Gentle and lovely; apparently so sweet that your mind's appetite can't quite let go of it.

It's here again.

Mom in this kitchen scrambling eggs just before you drag off to school...Dad driving the family down this same State Street during a long ago Christmas week...Johnny and you working a summer-job assembly line in this old shuttered plant....Joan starring in the play where you first met in this very same theatre building....the delivery room up there on the third floor of this hospital you and the kids are driving past.

Here's the thing.

Everyone has a jewel-box stuffed haphazardly with vintage memories. Each a bead in the necklace of life that we wear. And while we don't always finger or fathom them, there they are still. Inviting our attentions. Encouraging our reflections. Without remembered yesterdays, there are thinner todays and fewer good tomorrows.

Oh, I can hear them now. The eager protesting voices of tomorrow beckoning us not to tarry but to travel....! And they are right. Still, they do need maps. Which is why yesterday's travelers are still here. Not the embittered ones who carry regrets on their shoulders, for their compasses are broken and provide poor directions. Instead, we call upon the enthused ones who can still hum the lyrics: Some things seem to be happening again...

...only this time, humming them in a fully rehearsed key for the newer travelers to hear.