n two hours I'll put on my "nice clothes" and drive back to my home town. I don't visit Washington often, but I'm stalked by all manner of memories when I do. My parents live about 6 miles out of the town proper, so seeing them doesn't require such a literal trip down memory lane. Driving into town itself is like reading an old diary; You were there - you made the memories, but it doesn't feel like you anymore. A bad actor playing a younger version of you, but not you. You've changed. Nostalgia can be a lot of things, from healthy to suffocating - and sometimes both at once.

A few weeks ago I put on these same clothes to attend the visitation of a childhood friend's mother. Nancy was Mike's mom, and Mike was one of exactly 3 kids my age that lived within bicycling distance for a kid. Mike was a good friend growing up, and I spent many days over at his house, where his mom got the unenviable task of dealing with me for the afternoon. She was a Mom away from Mom, and I always took that for granted. You're a kid - Mom's do Mom things, and they're interchangeable until that day you realize they're irreplaceable and singular. They're everything everyone else is, except when they don that invisible cape and ascend to the rarefied heights that being a Mom requires. Nancy was a good Mom, to whomever needed it.

Once in grade school, Mike and I had options. The potential friend pool multiplies geometrically when a bus dumps you in a chattering mass of hundreds of others, every day, for many years in row. I don't remember which, but I'd guess it was 2nd grade or earlier when I met Jeff. Whether legitimately or not, he's always occupied a spot in memory as the Smartest Person I Ever Knew. I read a lot. Jeff read more and remembered everything.

Friends at school became guests at home. Parents began counting the days until the kids could drive themselves. Jeff's Mom adeptly earned her stripes on many a weekend as we would invade her house and hole up in Jeff's room. Sharon did crafts, and Jeff's Dad did woodworking. If anything ever needed to be built, the materials were usually close at hand, as well as the expertise to keep us from self-immolating. I think Moms have to size each other up when they're dropping their kids off at a friend's house. Trust enters the equation. Maybe it was just a little more innocent in those days, but I didn't know a Mom who wouldn't drop everything to help a kid - whether their own or not. Maybe I was lucky; Maybe Sharon, Nancy, and my Mom were rock-stars of rearing. Mike and Jeff are exceptional guys, and my Mom raised two fine young gents in my older brothers - Not to mention that I haven't climbed any book depository towers.

I don't like this gradual crumbling of the past. Reality swirls and settles into the silt of distant memory, and gets stirred up again when someone passes away. Those gossamer tendrils tying memory to reality are broken, and we're left with imperfect, incomplete memory. I wear "nice" today to honor Sharon, as I did Nancy, because they left an indelible mark. They did a thousand-fold more than I'll ever know, but I hope they know what they did for me. They were a Mom away from Mom, and helped raise a lot more kids than the ones they shared names with.