The Past is Ever Before Us

Recently, I learned that people in some cultures gesture before them when they speak of the past. When they talk about the future, they gesture behind them.

It makes sense. We can see the past as clearly as we see what is in front of us. We cannot see the future, just as we cannot see what is behind our backs. (Elementary schoolteachers are an exception, of course.)

It comforts me, as we leave a place and people we love, to think of the past as ever before me. I will always be able to see those people and places in a way I am not able to see my future. But how does one do that without living in the past? How does the past become a place of reference, not residence?

Our 49th anniversary was our next-to-last day in Cleveland. We spent part of it at one of our favorite places, the Cleveland Museum of Art. CMA contains one of the best and most balanced collections of art in America.

You can see many world-famous pieces of art for free. It does not have gates inside the door, with employees “suggesting” a $20 “donation.” CMA’s trustees follow the museum’s founders’ desire that it be free “for all the people forever.”

When our sons and then our grandchildren were small, they loved the armor court. There, knights wear truly shining armor. We also loved watching our grandchildren create art on giant, super-duper iPads in the Artlens Gallery. Those are some of our favorite memories.

At the museum, Jacquie and I, farm kids who grew up knowing nothing about art, learned how to “see” art. By looking at good art, we learned the simple method of distinguishing it from bad art. As one art critic says, “When you see bad art, you first go “Wow!” Then, after looking longer, you say, “huh?”, because there isn’t much there. When you see good art, you may say, “huh?” first. But then, if you look longer, you begin to say, “Wow!”

We sat for several minutes in front of “Lot’s Wife.”This monumental painting shows the bleakest landscape you can imagine. In the foreground, are railroad tracks like the ones that carried doomed passengers to the death camps. In the background, are the shadows of what appear to be ruined buildings obscured by smoke.

Yes, when I first saw it years ago, I said, “huh”. The longer I look at it, the more I say, “Wow!”

Going to the museum symbolizes what I mean about the past being ever before us. Our memory mounts moments on the walls of our hearts like paintings in a museum. We can see faces before us the way Rembrandt saw a kitchen maid.

We can see camping trips before us the way the Hudson River School artists painted the wilderness.

We can take our time as we look at those moments. We can step back and get perspective, or move in close to see the tiny details.

Chances are, the moments that made us say, “Wow!” at first, will remain in the warehouse. The ones that we hang in the galleries of the heart will be the moments that puzzled us, maybe even pained us, or have escaped our notice until now. What was that fight about? What about those meals we shared with others?

Stepping back, we can see deeper meaning in them. We may see grace strokes that we missed at first. We may see how those moments influence our choices now, the way artists today learn to draw from Michelangelo or learn to break the rules of drawing from Picasso.

We do not put the past and all the people we have loved and all the places we have been behind us. The past is ever before us. All we have to do is look.