“To not decide is to decide,” is a quotation my father liked to recite. I probably first heard him say it when I was 11 or 12 years old and, for years, I considered the quote to be the perfect definition of his life philosophy. Perpetually on the go until he was finally hobbled by illness, he always seemed to be charging into the next adventure, the next project or the next scheme.
With time’s passage I have modified my outlook on the quotation and realized that my dad really intended its repetition to be a message about change and how we embrace its constancy or put on blinders and attempt to ignore it.
One of the toughest changes for me is losing places that have served for years as repositories for my memories. When my dad died, his mountainside home where I spent summers and winter weekends with my siblings slipped forever out of our lives. I cling to the few acres of wooded land we own nearby not for its monetary value, but because they are a talisman I can turn to when I want to remember good times with my dad and formative lessons learned in my youth.
I married a fellow memory clinger and our home is filled with touchstones recalling fond recollections and important life moments. I resist embracing a Kindle in defiance of common sense for the same reason. Books with their weight and heft are soaked with memories and physical reminders of the lesson or enlightenment that sprang forth from their pages.
I own three copies of “The Great Gatsby,” including a Russian edition, simply because I fell in love with Fitzgerald in junior high school.
I hate to see places I love vanish or meet the wrecking ball, and I loudly gripe about their demise to anyone with the patience to indulge me. I drive by the Porthole Restaurant’s remains twice a day and cringe at the sight of plywood partially covering the yawning gap in the building’s wall.
I covered dozens of meetings in the Porthole’s function room with its ship models adorning the walls. I ate several times a year in the dining room and most of the meals were occasions for celebration with someone I love. I felt the same way about seeing Anthony’s Hawthorne and Christie’s wiped off the face of the earth.
If my father was reading this, he would chuckle, reload his pipe with a pinch of Carter Hall, and recite something written by Herman Hesse. He loved me and often mocked me for my slow, often cautious approach to living life.
But I think he also saw in my personality a reminder that his headlong lust to embrace change, to dive into it like a desperate man plummeting into a waterfall, could lead him into danger.
It is my belief that memories don’t die, but they fade slightly every time we lose a concrete connection to them. Losing a place like the Little River Inn and the Porthole or Anthony’s also means the loss of shared community memories invested in those places.
To a certain extent we define our values about what makes a community a great place to live in with our memories of places in that community. If we played in this playground, ate Easter dinner at this restaurant or shopped in that store, those collective memories create a narrative defining why a city or town is important to us.
Many people, mostly younger than me, will point to the Porthole or the vacant lot where Anthony’s stood and say, “Move on, let bygones be bygones.”
What they are saying is what my dad was trying to tell me when he recited, “To not decide is to decide.” We have the choice to embrace change and, by definition, move on or stand by the wayside and let change shape us.
That said, it’s hard for me not to drive through Boston’s Seaport District and say, “Take the harbor out of the picture and this could be Des Moines or Minneapolis. Where’s Jimmy’s Harborside?”
My father would have replied to this complaint by reciting another one of his favorite quotes: “Let your home be a mast not an anchor.” He was a big believer in sailing into uncharted waters and tearing down in order to build up. But I have a quotation of my own I like to recite: “You can’t put your arms around a memory.” Like Johnny Thunders, I still try.