What is the past but what we choose to remember?

After all, Bao Bomu says, what is the past but what we choose to remember?

You remember only what you want to remember. You know only what your heart allows you to know.

And now at the airport, after shaking hands with everybody, waving good-bye, I think about all the different ways we leave people in this world. Cheerily waving good-bye to some at airports, knowing we'll never see each other again. Leaving others on the side of the road, hoping that we will. Finding my mother in my father's story and saying good-bye before before I have a chance to know her better.

That is the way it is with a wound. The wound begins to close in on itself, to protect what is hurting so much. And once it is closed, you no longer see what is underneath, what started the pain.

I have a writer's memory which makes everything worse than maybe it actually was.