Perspective, Time and the Reality of Now

I received a response to my latest post that alluded to the dangers of going home.  Friends wrote to relate a discussion over breakfast about the "reality of now" versus the pleasant memories of a time gone by.  The man spoke of visiting the farmhouse where his grandmother lived while he was growing up.  He had memories of sights and sounds and smells of the large bustling kitchen but returning as a grown man was disappointed at the cramped room that was so different when seen from the perspective of a grown man.  Similarly, he returned to grandpa's cabin after years away and was again disappointed at the change and his happy memories were dashed by the "reality of now". 

For another, it was going back to Gramma's old house where "lovely red brick walls were covered in ugly vinyl siding, gorgeous old stained glass windows were replaced with energy efficient ones and big beautiful exterior wooden doors had also been replaced. The door bell had a little twist handle that one would use to ring it.  This was now gone as well".  While she took solace that  all this was done in an effort to keep the old place alive and well, it "didn't do a damn thing for the keeping of my memories. I cried and cried"

I have experienced similar things of course.  The world looks different from six feet in the air than it did when I was a kid.  Most things in life change as our perspective changes, though the changes are more subtle with things we experience everyday such as businesses or Main Street.  When we visit someplace where we haven't the luxury of the slow evolution over time, the shock is more palpable.  My most shocking experience was a hot chocolate cup.  Sitting in my grandparents house, with the blue kitchen counter, listening to WJOL news at lunchtime, I drank from a mug with an elf and a television set.  When Granddad died, I took the mug from the cabinet to my own house.  What I had grown up believing was a standard, and very grown up, sized coffee mug is little more than demi-tasse.  The effect of thirty years of seperation.

I have been accused of sentimentality on this blog and in my historic fiction writing in general.  I have a keen sense of time and place and details as well as an appreciation.  But I am also acutely aware of change and evolution proceeding around us always.  As Richard Bach wrote in his book, Illusions, "...if stagnation is perfection, then Heaven is a swamp".  He also uses the ocean as a metaphor for beauty in change.  The ocean is beautiful and one could argue it is perfect, yet it is constantly changing.  Always changing, always beautiful, always perfect, just like the waters of Gohere Bay.