Burning Leaves
 

I have a memory etched into me from so far back that it predates my abilities for speech and elevated cognition. The memory is of a teeter-totter in my backyard, being held on someone's lap and gently rocked. My now grown up hands remember the tiny hands clutching the metal handle, and the simple joy I had.

Years later, (in the days when it was still okay to do so), my parents were burning a large pile of leaves in the backyard. I watched fascinated as the multicolor flames licked the colors from the leaves. Soon after the fire died, I noticed something: a small metal handle amid the pile of smoldering leaves. My four-year-old mind knew instantly it was THE handle, the one from the beloved teeter-totter which had left an indelible mark on my childhood mind. Without thinking, I ran to the smoking pile of ashes and grasped the metal handle with sheer joy - and screamed almost immediately after as I learned the lesson of not touching things that are still hot. My little hand blistered and pained me like nothing I had felt in my entire young life. I cannot impress on you the dichotomy of that moment; the joy of discovering a deeply loved memory, and the excruciating realization of how much pain one can feel to reach for that memory and be scorched by what it has become

I tell you this because I think it's going to happen again. Thousands who loved the original Battlestar Galactica will hear of the remake and excitedly tune in to relive that love, only to get burned just as I did with the metal handle as a child.

A memory is only precious if it remains unchanged.

Affectionately and respectfully,
Muffit

Muffit,

I would also submit that a person (or thing) is not really gone as long as WE REMEMBER them (or it).

BST

Very true BST :). A memory is, after all, just a 5-dimensional picture of something we experienced. As long as we have that picture, that moment lives on.

:muffit:

Which is only made more painful by the fact that someone who careth naught for OUR beloved memories tramples them, laughs at us, and calls it creativity. it's almost a kind of adultery!

True Senmut, if only those that could were those that want to. Then we would have a true BSG.

:muffit: