More Lydia Davis
Maybe a happy memory can't involve people who were only strangers or casual friends. You can't be left alone, in your old age and pain, with memories that include only people who have forgotten you. The people in your happy memories have to be the same people who want to have you in their own happy memories...My neighbor across the street once brought a plate of cake to the back door during a time of mourning. But I can see that if some day she and I were to become estranged, that would spoil the happy memory. I see that happy memories can be erased...I can see that an experience does not make a happy memory if it started out well but ended badly...You have to make sure, somehow, that nothing spoils the thing while it is happening, and then that no later experience erases it. I could have happy memories. I can see that the things I do with another person, and with a feeling of warmth toward that person, and with a person who will want to have me in his or her happy memory may make a good happy memory, while the things I do alone and especially with a feeling of ambition, or pride, or power, even if they are good in themselves, will not make a good happy memory...I should check now and then to make sure I am not alone too much, or unhappy with other people too often. I should add them up, now and then: what are my happy memories so far?