That was then; this is now.

Then and now. They sound so far away from each other don’t they? It’s as though then is way over there somewhere and now is here, sitting in my lap. I suppose there is a difference between then and now, but the more I think about one, the more I am reminded of the other.

Then. Then bookmarks the olden days. It is not simply yesterday, rather it is the bygone days. Then is what I did when I was a kid like those times I spent fishing from Uncle Herb’s dock with my brother and my neighbor, getting up at 6:00 a.m. and riding our bikes down the middle of car-less street with fishing poles, worms, and sandwiches in our hands. Then is what my own children did when they were kids like tromping through our pumpkin patch when we lived on the East Side, or trick-or-treating during the Halloween blizzard that dumped snow up to their chins, or using our picnic table as a stage for their backyard plays, audience optional. Then is what happened back then.

Now. Now is today. It is my work, work for a paycheck, work to keep a family intact, and work to keep a marriage growing. Now is my wife’s job, my children’s jobs, and each of our jobs to watch out for the other. For us to do that work and those jobs now we need cell phones in hand complete with email and text messaging; we need an i-Pod, a your-Pod, and a my-Pod at our fingertips, and we need laptops, desktops, and a pop-up internet so we can fetch the information that we want right now. Now is so incredibly current that it is almost tomorrow.

Then and now feel decades apart in time and tone. One is halcyon, the other harried, but here’s the twist: Now is next year’s then. What I am doing now will eventually become what I did back then. Whether I am casting a line or surfing the net right now, some time in the future I will remember it as happening back then. The lines will begin to blur and, gradually, I will not store these memories in separate categories but bunch them until they become part of my collective history. Then, all these moments will be saved side by side just as they are now.