January 19, 2007
Friday 

When you remember me, it means that you have carried something of who I am with you, that I have left some mark of who I am on who you are. . . . For as long as you remember me, I am never entirely lost. . . . If you forget me, one of the ways I remember who I am will be gone. If you forget me, part of who I am will be gone.
                          — Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark

Frederick Buechner is an American theologian whose fiction and memoir spring from his faith but do not preach. For a number of years I have used Listening to Your Life, a compilation of passages arranged as daily meditations. I’ve marked my favorites with page flags, and if I went through them all I’m sure I would discover that they are all about remembering and being remembered. Buechner writes about “the giants of our childhood,” about the books that leave so indelible an impression that we try all our lives to write as memorably, about the uses of memory itself.

The passage above is probably the one I love the most of all the Buechner that I know. It is the one chosen for January 16, but my use of the book has been irregular these past weeks (I didn’t take it to Wernersville), and this morning it fell open to that page, double marked by my bookmark and the page flag. I thought this a happy accident, or at least a significant one, since so much of my thinking and writing since November has been about remembering and being remembered.

I read today’s passage from Buechner after reading the local paper’s obituaries and learning that yet another person of my acquaintance, and about my age, has died. This will probably happen more and more often in the years to come, as my classmates and I begin to turn 60 (as I do in March). For a long time I’ve been seeing my friends at their parents’ funerals. Soon, we’ll be seeing each other at each other’s.

I actually barely knew the man whose obituary I read today. He was the husband of a woman who was a Weight Watchers leader in the early 1990s, and I’d met him only once when we all turned up at the Christmas party of a mutual friend. This woman was a particular favorite of mine. She had good presentation skills, she was warm and engaging, and practical in her approach to the “rules” of the Weight Watchers plan. In recent years her picture has been in the paper from time to time in connection with the social service agency she works for, and I know that she has gained back the weight she had lost.

Remembering her and remembering that particular era of my Weight Watchers participation left me nostalgic for a time in my life that has ended. Lynn was little (just starting elementary school), I had a different set of friends (the other mothers I saw at Lynn’s ballet lessons and the after-school spiritual study group we went to once a week) with whom I am no longer in touch, I was teaching and going to graduate school. This time in my life is excellent, make no mistake about that. The early 90s weren’t better than now, they were just different.

That nostalgia, plus a Friday morning when I felt particularly lumpy and dumpy, set me to thinking, you know, I could try Weight Watchers again. I haven’t been a member since May, when my prepaid pass ran out. I’ve followed the plan on my own, resolutely putting the weekly fee into my Gallivanting Fund, and I’ve had some success. (It’s not Advanced Multivariable Really Really Hard Calculus — it’s eat less, move more, choose fresh over processed, and drink lots of water.) But like most people, I saw the pounds begin to accumulate, ounce by ounce, over the holiday season.

Almost against my will, I found myself crossing town at about 11:30. The Weight Watchers center is in a strip mall storefront right beside a Chinese buffet restaurant. I am always amused by the signs that hang right beside each other on the draped windows: All You Can Eat! and Weight Watchers.

I walked in and before I had even set down my things I heard the receptionist say, “Hello, Margaret! The meeting is about to start. Why don’t you slip in and we’ll do the paperwork later.”

And that’s what did it. Someone remembered me. By name. She welcomed me back, with joy and without judgment. I signed all the papers, and resolved to give this weight loss thing one more serious try.

Interested readers can follow the current struggle through posts marked “Refiguring.” Maybe.