I can remember the first time a boy held my hand and my palm was aware of touch not protection. I was in Radio City Music Hall for the early daytime movie and show. Friends from overnight camp in the Berkshire Mountains congregated for a reunion not sponsored by the camp directors. A redheaded boy I’d made lanyards with in arts and crafts, suddenly, by a gesture, made me aware I was growing out of girlhood.

Lipstick was forbidden until the ninth grade. “Loose” girls wore it prior to eighth-grade graduation. Manufacturers of red lip pomade pacified early adolescent females and their mothers. Yes, World War II was going on, but double Mello-roll ice cream cones, jewelry that contained radium and glowed in dark closets, and blackouts were more exciting than battle reports from far away.

“Pomp and Circumstance” played at elementary school commencement. In a white dress I’d hand sewn -- the same pattern as those of all the other girls -- I carried an old-fashioned bouquet of flowers. Later in life, I turned tassels and took a slip of paper entitling me to collect a diploma, or merely had a degree bestowed upon me from a standing position at my seat. In January 1948, summer eyelet pique, and white, flat, ankle-strap pumps adorned the body that actually was handed the invitation to start high school. I never found out why, in New York, elementary school graduations during and after World War II were both January and June, but that had me complete high school in 3 ½ years so I could start school in September like most people elsewhere.

First love, birth, automobile, apartment, anniversary, home phone number leave impressions in memory. No longer important or even useful, they seem etched where time can’t scar them. My oldest offspring used to say what others may feel but not label: He didn’t like turning 10 years old, for, he said, he’d never be able to again write his age in a single digit. Leaving 19 seemed so difficult, we had his birthday cake trimmed with “happy birthday, age 19 and 365 days.”

When our son was in his third year of medical school, my husband and I bought him his first car. The four-wheeled, new, silver-gray means of transportation sat in the driveway where my husband had parked it. The boy delayed taking its keys and explained he would now have to leave behind him “Mom, may I borrow your car?” Another in a series of never-agains was happening. For him, each first also represented a loss.

When he had gone off to the University of Pennsylvania in 1977, I had bought him a portable manual typewriter. Until I purchased my computer, (personal PC’s came out in 1981-2) I still used the same bulky Remington I’d received in 1950. After all, a manual was indeed portable, requiring no electric outlet, and being lighter in weight, if 28 pounds was “light.” The day his new car arrived, he read that Smith Corona was phasing out portable manual typewriters forever. "Something in my life will never be made again. How old to be aware of what will soon be an “I remember once when this was sold!” What in your life isn’t made anymore?" His car was modern, but his typing machine became obsolete. He insisted that I answer his question.

Funny, I could easily remember what was first, new. But I had trouble with what wasn’t anymore. So much is full circle.

Originally, my parents’ Stromberg Carlson record player accepted only one 78 rpm disc at a time. Later, a record-changer was installed that enabled them to pile up several selections. What an advancement in technology not to have to get up almost as quickly as they’d sat down. LP’s weren’t even in imagination. In our present 21st century, even CD’s are considered clumsy when one can carry portable music in a rectangle about the size of my keyless-entry car key.

I had a machine permanent wave on my frail blond tresses as a very young girl. I could smell my hair singeing from the electricity in the attempt to curl. A “cold wave” perm with chemicals replaced the monstrous metal thing. Wonder if that process, with modification, may return if chemists and physicians find problems with scientific compounds? Now women use electric curling irons at home to either temporarily curl or straighten and don’t burn the ends.

Manual transmission and open-top cars haven’t disappeared with automatic and air conditioned automobiles. Madison Avenue, in fact, still hard-sells open tops and stick-shifts.

Some things in my life will never be again: my body giving birth, burying my parents, my older sister’s grave bearing her name, my fingers working without arthritis. I thought my life- cycle timing had fewer objects obsolete until my husband began talking about telephone operators, girls wearing mandatory bathing caps at public swimming pools, 45 rpm records our children played, the junk man’s annual trip down city streets in his horse-drawn cart and bells clanking asking about sharpening manual lawnmowers or scissors, ovens I had to clean, refrigerators I had to defrost, clothing I had to starch, milk delivered in glass bottles.....

Okay. I’ve so enjoyed 21st century technology! But some things, and not just rag-top cars, do come around again: I remember wearing red lip pomade – it’s now called lip gloss.