Nostalgia / Memory

I am now in the 10th year of a walking meditation I call BRAINCATION

BRAINCATION is a 3-mile walk, the same route every day, 7 days a week, usually in the hour before sunset. I never bring my phone, my handbag, or frankly anything, other than my (self-admittedly dorky) illuminated wristbands, for when the sun sets around 4:30 pm in December. Occasionally, a friend might join, and lately, Matt, my hubs.

The walk is dedicated THINK TIME. I leave all the work, to-do lists, chores, and family stuff at home - just pure think time. I began BRAINCATION shortly after the 2016 election results, in late January, as a way to process. The texture, tempo, impact, expression, and focus of the walk have all changed over the years in ways that feel impossible to enumerate. But over the past year, it’s become largely about breathing. In 2025, as this new cycle of unmitigated chaos continued to unfold and rage on, and it became harder and harder to look away from the onslaught of global devastations, my breathing became a lifeline towards helping stay focused on who and what to support. There are very few Big Picture things under our control, and our precious battery drains quickly (and endlessly) the more we stay stuck in those mental doom loops; but every single molecule of energy spent towards who and what we support just creates more energy. Support and gratitude are truly renewable human energy sources.

Today, on my walk, a most extraordinary thing happened – singular, in the entirety of my life. At the half-way point of my walk, as I was turning to head back up the hill, a car turned into the parking space just in front of me. I recognized it as the exact car my parents drove when I was a baby.

It so happens that my very first memory in life - which I’ve held onto for all of my sentient years - is of waking up in the backseat/trunk of this car & looking up. In my mind’s eye, it’s brief - just a flash of a moment. I pull myself up, wobbly, grab onto the backsides of the front seats and, I think, look out the front window. Or, maybe the side window. That’s it.

But the sensation that rumbled through my entire being, having come face to face with this car - the 3D incarnation of a lifelong blurry memory, my life’s first memory (albeit yes, from outside the car) - felt palpably otherworldly, elusive, and indescribable.

It was impossible to resist engaging with the owner of this time machine; the impulse to share the enormity of the moment too strong. The driver was a pleasant-looking older man, perhaps in his early 70’s, with a gracious demeanor suggesting he was accustomed to being stopped to talk about his car. He explained that he had fallen in love with and bought the car when he was 19, and had been driving it ever since. A handful of years earlier, on the 50^th anniversary of owning it, he had decided he better convert it to electric ($$!) if he was going to keep the relationship going in the best shape possible. He reflected, touchingly, that in essence his love for this car had been the longest relationship of his life.

I’m not sure I’d ever seen a model as similar to the one my folks drove – but this one somehow felt uniquely the same. What struck me most, though, was that – while it had been carefully restored (indisputably in great shape) - it did not have that “Don’t you DARE touch me” pristine-ness that many restored vintage cars typically ooze. Instead, like a captivating, sunny & smile-creased elder, it looked beautifully tended, but not overly so.

I don’t know enough about cars to speak to what it was I was seeing, or intuiting, but something about the wheels made them feel like they could only be from another time. There was a casualness, a certain full octane vintage-y – try as you like, you absolutely can never capture nowadays – late 60’s soaked hallucinatory quality about it, impossible to inhabit in the 21^st C.

The mere presence of a cell phone ruins the moment. But for a second, simply staring at that car felt as close to being transported back in time as I’ve ever felt in my life. Not just back in time, to the late 60’s, but ALL the way back to my Very. First. Memory.

I’m told that, as we age, we aren’t actually remembering our first memory; we’re simply continuing to remember our idea of that memory. That’s a funny distinction – I have no idea what the difference is between a memory and the memory of a memory.. - but it’s one I’d love to discuss with someone who does.

What an extraordinarily beautiful gift to happen upon.

NB: I was able to share the details of this otherwise uncapturable moment (again, no phone on the walk!) because Kris posted info about his vehicle in the window of the car, and a quick search once I got hom revealed a #WSJ article, shared on IG.