Flashbacks

 

Last month, I mentioned to several friends (in bcc'd email) that I had a 40 year flashback to the last few days of 1980. I was making a landing on the Cape Hope at the Southern tip of Chile on 12/30/80, after spending the previous three weeks expedition touring Antarctica. At midnight the following night [12/31/80-1/1/81], we were somewhere over the Caribbean Sea on the way to Miami.

I asked if anyone else had year-end memories from 40 or 50 or 17 or any years ago. I received some very interesting responses, I offer a selection here.

"Fifty-three years ago this week, sharing a very cheap hotel room in cold, rainy Rome."

" . . . a day off, vegging out at the apartment very likely watching a bowl game."

"Five years ago, I was on a dinner cruise of Lake Como, Italy; before heading to a wedding the Switzerland."

"I spent 1944 New Year's evening looking forward my marriage the following day."

"In recent years, I have come to like nothing better than to mark the midnight hour with a glass of champagne - in bed!"

"40 years ago we were just back from bicycling across North America, Vancouver to Boston."

"New Year's Day 30 years ago, taking my first husband to rehab; New Year's Eve 19 years ago, welcoming my first son with my second husband."

"A little over 40 years ago we lived on the cable car line and met you."

"40 years ago, I was -8 years old, living in the Great Before."

"I'm typically asleep to ring in the new year."

"On NYE, I was 11 months into being a widow, and very surprised to find myself leaving the year of my husband's death with great reluctance."

"Forty-seven years ago, newly married and moving to Rapid City, South Dakota."

"Pregnant and . . . well just about covers it."

and I got a photo from a friend of her with her father in Central Park, New York on New Year's Eve 50 years ago.

and and no, that picture above is not from Antarctica, but it is of another long ago memory . . .