if this week had to have a theme, it'd have something to do with old faces. or maybe i'm just saying that because i drove down to joliet yesterday afternoon to attend Jane Henneberry's wake.

Jane was the sister of Sr. Grace and was, as best i who knew her so fleetingly could tell, a paragon of kindness and good will. if you know Sr. Grace you'll understand that these virtues run in the family.

well, having left mundelein at about 3:30 i arrived in joliet at 5, stood in line for a little while, and paid my respects (it's not possible to just shake hands or give a hug to Sr. Grace - to her everyone has a history that matters, and she took the opportunity to affirm each of us in our connection to her as she explained us to her brother Paul). then i plopped down in a seat near the rear to wait for jay, who had his own plans - though they included us going out to dinner after the wake. so i sat for awhile just watching the line move toward Sr. Grace.

tapped on the shoulder, there's the great smiling face of chris traina, former colleague at jca now at lemont. we chatted.

i saw a few other familiar faces... but names?

one young man approached and spoke to me. i knew i knew him. i knew he had spent time in one of my classes at jca, but could not come up with a name. he had to tell me. (sorry, vince) and there were a few others. and then i knew that memory is not a permanent function in this human being.

(o god. i have become one of those "say what, sonny?" geezers who squint, generally smell bad, and can't remember ANYTHING. at the front of the room Sr. Grace is - to all appearances - effortlessly recalling old times and old faces while at the back i'm blowing bubbles in the depths of lethe.)

a young woman comes up to me, big smile, "hi brother tom." and i say to myself i'm going to get this one. i know this one. and after a telling pause: "kate, how are you?" and right behind her, two more... uh... mature types: "oh, it's the sheas" kin of the infamous erin. we chatted. whew...i pulled that one out of the hat.

it may not be a critical problem. yet. earlier that day (or was it the day before?), sitting at my desk in 208 i hear a familiar (but not a regular) voice behind me. i turn and blurt "amy!" and blurt "and quinn!" - in person. but i have to admit i was cheating (sort of - not that i wouldn't know amy anywhere) because i had just been catching up with my online friends. and amy had recently posted some new shots of the mighty quinn, who in person is a hundred times cuter than the already very cute pictures at amy's place.

and then there's charlie langton. i've saved him for last because it's testimony that i'm not the only memory-impaired boomer on the planet. the other evening i check the old inbox and find - embedded among the usual prime-for-deletion notes from various english teacher lists - a string of messages from charlie langton. of all people.

this is becoming a familiar story. one friend googles another friend's name and comes up with a link to one of my journal pages. friend investigates and digs up my email address. voila.

well, charlie was a bit puzzled because he couldn't remember my last name or that i had visited him in atlanta back in '69. and he said so. and then he figured it out. and i just laughed. i didn't blame him a bit...and i had my reasons. not the least of which was that i was at that time (still only a year or two out of high school) a master of chameleonic camouflage. i could become nothing... well, nevermind that....

i haven't seen charlie since i left milwaukee in 1973.... just in case you don't remember, dear reader, everyone was a mess in 1973. and now, if his poetry is any measure (along with his friendly sane recent notes) , he has managed to find some - what? - balance, understanding, peace, happiness.... just as we might hope that anyone who has "survived" (stupid stupid word) from that point to this one would have. nice to have charlie back on the landscape.

other stuff: the day began as a school day and it ends as a vacation, spring break. i'm going to read real books, fix broken links, catch a movie or three, work on my damn stupid professional teaching portfolio, and celebrate Easter with my best of all possible moms (in something like that order).

now reading tim o'brien's The Things They Carried with the ap class, i'm remembering ancient days. reconsidering my own parts in them. his "on the rainy river" chapter always gets me choked up. even now i don't know what vietnam did to me. i think it's still doing it. sorta kinda.

now reading john mcgahern's By the Lake. momentarily stalled out on manil suri's The Death of Vishnu, but it's not his fault.

You have to begin to lose your memory, if only in bits and pieces, to realize that memory is what makes our lives. Life without memory is no life at all, just as an intelligence without the possibility of expression is not really an intelligence. Our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feeling, even our action. Without it, we are nothing.

Luis Buñuel