View Master Reels

I've been cruising Ebay for Christmas decorations, and, of course, once you're on Ebay, it's a little like being at a six acre flea market. You really can't stop looking after ten minutes. For me, Ebay is both a shopping mecca and a historical archive. I have found old decorations we had as children, things like Glass Wax Stencils (which we are using this year,) and even photographs of our town and others going back over one hundred years. I don't suppose I need to extol the good points of Ebay to anyone who has explored its millions of offerings. Suffice it to say, that for me, at this point in my life, with daily restrictions that don't allow me to leave the house to shop for an entire day, Ebay serves more than a purpose: it is a commercial and recreational lifeline. 

One of my recent Ebay finds has been vintage View Master reels. (I still have my little red View Master viewer in the old toybox upstairs.) I've ordered several sets of reels....Washington, D.C., The Nativity, Queen Elizabeth II's Coronation, National Parks, Space Exploration, and others. When I was a child, we had the Washington, D.C.  and Nativity reels, so when I looked at them once again this week after fifty-five years of not seeing them, it was a memories moment. I could actually feel that I was a child again. The years seemed to melt away, and in my mind I was sitting in the old family living room the way it used to be: cold, linoleum floors, very little furniture, my sisters also children, and my parents young again.

In the intervening years since I last looked at my own View Master as a six year old, I have, like most people, put away certain aspects of my childhood, placing them on neat storage shelves in the back of my mind. I have, after all, been raising my own children, moving on with my life and career, focusing on current events, family and friends and my grandchildren, and really not giving any thought at all to things that happened to me so long ago.

Big moments in history have crowded out the little ones...things like the assassination of a president, space travel, wars, the economy, new administrations every so many years, and world events. Even a sale at Kohl's tends to take an upper position in my memory hierarchy over what I received for Christmas in 1958. My life has a kind of rhythm to it, like the wheels of a locomotive, and once in motion, it takes something like a brick wall to make us stop or at least to slow down and remember. Really remember.

We all mentally admit that those memories are there. Yes, I was six when this or that happened. Yes, I felt good or bad when this or that person came to visit. And maybe that's the way it should be for the most part. There is a name for people who only live in the past, and we don't want to be that. But, in this present high-tech, frantically mobile, ever striving for more world that is ours, are we living at such a breakneck pace that we have no time at all for the memories, for the pondering why, for the gratitude for, or for the dreaming what if?

The View Master reels we each have stored away in our own minds are far more entertaining than the commercial ones. We each have pictures of our parents and grandparents, childhood friends, school, first pets, first jobs, first accomplishments, first loves. We have memories of weddings and funerals, reunions, and vacations. We have memories of conversations with people no longer with us, perceptions that were our own even if they were inaccurate or silly, and hopes and dreams that maybe still can come true if we pull them out of storage, dust them off, and put them in a more visible place in our life.

If we are, indeed, never too old to dream, then I believe we are also never too old to remember, because in remembering, we are embracing the essence of our own life to this point. Yes, some of those memories may be painful, embarrassing, or condemning. But we are no longer children. This time we can look at those memories with the clear eyes of adulthood, examine them for truth and fault, and realize that we were only children then, or, at least, younger than we are now. We can hug ourselves and walk on knowing that there is one less weight on our shoulders. Yet many of our memories are delightful, joyous, funny, tender. Re-experiencing those memories is like going home again, to a home that we know does not exist anymore, and the wonder and feeling of belonging that comes from reliving them is a gift we should not deny ourselves.

Why not try a memory afternoon, or hour the next time you want to take a short trip? Settle back on the couch with a good cup of tea or coffee, and let the memories come back. Pick a year, pick a place, pick a person, and let the past become a part of your present, if only for a short while. Let the blessings of whatever good you can find in the View Master reels of your own past make you a better person in the present. Tell yourself, as George Bailly did, that you really have had a wonderful life!