Life's Cycles

I'm cleaning my desk off when I find the tassel from my high school graduation. That's enough to remind me of a world away, but I don't think of high school or graduation when I see it.
I think of a date I had close to a year and a half ago now. The "date" took place mainly in my car, so make of that what you will, but early on he was looking through the glove compartment and he found the wadded-up tassel. I'd hung it around my mirror for a couple of months after high school graduation, but it came down not long afterward when I decided that I didn't want to remember high school anymore. ...Or, maybe I decided it was a driving distraction. One of the two.
Anyway, he unknotted it and hung it back around my mirror. He said something about being proud of what I'd done, the wholeness of life, the present coming from the past, something like that. Or maybe he didn't ask and didn't say anything. Maybe I'm just ascribing good things to him that he doesn't deserve. He was very nice, then, the kind of French-Asian that's a lot more full-faced French and only Asian around the eyes. Not so much later.
I took it down the time after I saw him last because it reminded me of him, not of high school. It's stayed in my backseat for a very long time now.