Amy Sun
English
Diamond Bar, California

When I was very young, my mother would tell me stories. She was an incredible story-teller, weaving together fantastic stories from her own imagination. I would listen to her stories with my complete and utter attention, trying to commit each and every word to memory. Sometimes, after a few days, I would want to hear the same story again. My mother would begin, only to have me interrupt, "No, no! That's not right at all. That's not how you told it last time. I want to hear it the same way you told it last time!" And so my mother would begin again, trying hard to remember how she originally told the story. But it was never the same. It could never be the same. Even if she got the words right, the tones were wrong. She wasn't enthusiastic enough. She wasn't scary enough. She wasn't funny enough. It was just never as good as it was the first time. That, I think, was when I first realized that there are some things you can never get back.

There are a lot of things I'll never be able to get back. My baby blanket, the one that I needed every single night until I was in fifth grade, when I accidentally left it at a hotel during a family vacation. My first set of teeth, which all had to be pulled out by the dentist due to the cavities I got from insisting on only drinking sugar water all the time. My pet rabbit, who escaped from my back yard and ventured out into the wilderness of our suburban town.

The tragedy of being human, of living, is how clearly we can remember the past, and how impossibly unreachable the past is. All we can do is remember--but sometimes even our memories fail us. A professor once told me that we can only ever accurately remember something three times. If we recall something from memory more than three times, the memory becomes corrupted. Changed. In trying to remember the events of the past, we actually alter them. The memories evolve further and further from the truth, until they become unrecognizable.

What does this mean for us? Ten, twenty, thirty years from now, what will my memories of Carleton look like? Will I still remember how green the grass by the Chapel is? The lights along the sidewalks that only ever do the opposite of what you want them to do? Those tiny red bugs that look like ladybugs but are anything except ladylike?

Will I still remember standing on the Bald Spot freshman year, while President Oden welcomed all of us? How we all threw our blue frisbees across this very space, and how there were so many frisbees that the air was streaked with blue? It was so simple and beautiful and I remember thinking to myself that I would never forget that moment. Then a group of naked upperclassmen ran by, and I remember thinking that I would definitely never forget that moment.

Will I remember the first time I walked into Burton dining hall and realized that there were a group of people sitting together at a table who expected, and wanted, me to sit with them, almost like a family?

Will I remember the first time I walked into Professor McKinstry's office and saw that every single wall of her office was covered with books? Row after row of books. It was so incredible to me that one person could own so many books.

Will I remember my first mai fete party? Will I remember driving to Cub Foods at 2 a.m. on the last night of finals so that my friends and I could fuel up for our all-nighter? Stealing an entire pie from the dining hall for a friend's birthday my freshman year? Crying because I had my heart broken by a boy? Crying because someone accidentally hit me in the face with a broomball stick? Crying because it was so cold in the winter that tears actually fell uncontrollably out of my eyes?

What will I remember when I leave Carleton today, my last day as a student here? I don't know. What I do know is that this may be the last time we are all together here, in this same place. Some of us will go across the world, across the country, maybe just across the street. But it will never be the same--we will never all be here together again, here in this very place.

So perhaps instead of worrying about what we will remember, instead of worrying about the things we can never get back, we should just focus on being here. In the present. After all, what is there to remember, if all you can remember is remembering? Life is too full of places to go, things to do, people to meet, for us to worry about the future or the past. Let's enjoy it all the first time around, so we don't have to look back and wish, If only I could do it again.