Getting Old (Lang Syne)

I mean, 'Should old acquaintance be forgot?' Does that mean that we should forget old acquaintances, or does it mean if we happened to forget them, we should remember them, which is not possible because we already forgot?

So said Harry, Billy Crystal, in the closing scene of “When Harry Met Sally” with Auld Lang Syne playing in the background. After years of acquaintance involving on and off animosity, chance meetings, friendship and once awkward sex, he and Sally finally discovered and expressed their love for each other. They are by no means the only couple to get together many years after meeting in their teens. No big deal, but still, I’ve been wondering. What is it that makes us in our later years want to get back together with friends and lovers from high school and college?

The impetus for my musing was a phone call that I received last month from Karin, a Swedish woman who 45 years ago spent a year with my family as our au pair. She called from Stockholm and said that she wanted to see us when she visited New York for Christmas. The call came out of the blue and caught me totally off guard. 45 years ago I was ten years old. She was 19. To me, she was a nice memory. She was cute with many boyfriends, strawberry blond hair and more energy in the dead of winter than I’d ever seen, but still, just one in a series of women who helped take care of me and my four brothers. For her, it must have been different. We were her formative year. She went from being a schoolgirl in a cold family in a cold country to an independent woman in a houseful of adoring boys in a land of freedom and opportunity. When she left us she became a Pan Am stewardess, flew the world, married, divorced, got ill, got better, wrote a book. Now she teaches yoga and writes a yoga-nutrition column. And for some reason, she wants to see us.

Should old acquaintance be forgot? For Karin, the answer is no. She had the courage to make a new life for herself at 19. The idea of getting together with us probably helped her see herself again as a young, beautiful, spirited woman. Romanticizing our youth, nostalgia, that’s one reason to rekindle a relationship “old long since” as auld lang syne translates to from Robert Burns’ Scottish.

“Psychology Today” describes what I’ll call the auld lang syne phenomenon as a reaction to our baby boomer lives in which we move from place to place and job to job in search of opportunity. They say at some point we “crave familiarity. Someone who laughs at the same jokes, understands the same quirks”. Someone who knew us when. Is that why divorced couples often remarry or why a high school reunion can reawaken a first love? Or is it more a reaction to getting old, feeling stuck, being unhappy? My guess is that at some age we get to feeling it’s now or never. For those not used to testing the waters, a familiar port is inviting and considerably less threatening than the open seas.

Hmmm…Now I’m not so sure. Maybe it would be better to let those old acquaintances stay in the past. Regression and infidelity hardly seem like good answers for unhappiness. As Burns wrote,

We two have paddled in the stream,

from morning sun till dine [dinner time] ;

But seas between us broad have roared

since auld lang syne.

What’s to say things would work out with an old flame? If things aren’t going well it makes better sense to concentrate on understanding and fixing what’s wrong in the present, not risking a tenuous present for a glorified past. What did we really know at 19 anyway? Not much, maybe, but everything sure was more intense.

The answer for Burns, one that we embrace in song every New Years Eve, is to share “a cup o’ kindness yet”. Kindness would be a euphemism for Scotch whiskey. I’m no Scot, but I’d say that he means more than just getting drunk together. With that drink we are to remember our past, recognize the “many a weary foot” we’ve wandered since and respect each other’s present life with a handshake, and no more, as a gesture of friendship.

Friends, if I have forgotten you over the past few years, please consider this an apology. I assure you, it was not willful and had nothing to do with Robert Burns or “Psychology Today”. Me and Billy, we should remember but we just forget. Blame it on advancing age and too much caffeine free Diet Coke. Those chemicals got to be bad for you. Call me and we can share a real cup o’ kindness, for auld lang syne.