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Label | Oct 28 2005

I want to ask her for a photograph. Not of her today, at 44, but of her then, at 15. Was she as beautiful as I remember? Or really, what did she look like? All I have is the idea she was beautiful. It’s like a label to a picture without the picture. So many of my memories take this form. The referent is missing. All that remains are labels, many of which, I know, are exaggerations, distortions, mistakes, or simply lies, attempts to make the past into something more coherent than it was, or less painful, or more flattering, or—most often—a better story.