Karen and I went to the movie theater to see Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale. The concession guy apparently decanted my Pepsi into a small cup with a straw—not unlike Carson the Butler filtering wine through cheesecloth—before telling me with a tinge of embarrassment, “That’ll be $7.” I was so shocked that I scanned my credit card and left without a word of recognition for the robbery that had just occurred. The good news was that my sensible wife smuggled a baggie of contraband pretzels and chips. I opened them and scarfed down the salty snacks to justify the refreshing Downton-priced drink.

Seventy-five commercials later, sipping Pepsi from “the south of France,” Karen said, “You are the only man in the theater.” She was not referring to my manliness, but to my singular presence in a theater filled with women. I slumped until another guy in cargo pants showed up with his wife. My identity and self-confidence were restored. Now I was ready to say goodbye to Downton Abbey.

Peter De Vries writes in Slouching Towards Kalamazoo, “the word was made flesh.” His comment, borrowed from the Gospel of John, was cultural rather than metaphysical. He meant that words, once loosed, seep into culture through social conduits—social media now, water coolers once. He tells of his mother confessing, “I have an identity crisis.” “What do you mean?” he asked. “I no longer understand your father.”

My own identity crisis is less domestic, more tribal. I am a registered member of the Cherokee Nation. Yet my roots also stretch toward France, Holland, and England. That leaves me conflicted. What team am I on? As a boy, I was a cowboy with fingers that shot imaginary bullets—my ignorance was bliss. Later, in high school, I became a College High Wildcat, fighting the cross-town rivals, the Sooner Spartans. Then I fought Baptists and Methodists, because they were not the home team. My edges are softer now. I pull for the visiting team more often than the home team. I despise labels. But labels still cling, like lint to an alpaca sweater. This leads me, improbably, back to Downton Abbey, a story that spans 1912–1930, which is positively built on labels.

I watched Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale with a surprising sense of loss. Perhaps that world—where service meant a life rung by bells, and women were barred from voting or running businesses—should not be mourned. Sidesaddle riding is the perfect metaphor: patriarchal tradition turning a woman’s natural seat into an awkward posture. Some cultural touchstones deserve their burial. Yet I confess to longing for what is gone: the sense of community, of belonging, of shared labor and play. My sadness watching the finale was the same sadness I felt flipping through the photographs of four sisters taken annually from 1975 to 2017. Time passes in an instant—the bright faces softening into wrinkles, smiles tempered into something wary, eyes deepened by living.

Time does not erase; it layers. Cities and people alike carry what came before, each generation leaving its traces like strata in rock. Edinburgh, Scotland offers a vivid case in point. The Old Town rises in medieval density, with servants tucked into upper floors, tradesmen in the middle, and the elite anchored to the street. The New Town, built in the 19th century, spread out with broad avenues and Georgian order, born from Enlightenment ideals. Together, the two halves tell a story of continuity and change.

This same tension animates Downton Abbey. Women who once deferred to fathers and husbands suddenly found themselves voting, inheriting, making decisions. Servants who once lived by the bell glimpsed other futures. Just as Edinburgh’s New Town did not erase the Old but stood alongside it, the Crawleys’ world straddles the fault line between honor-bound custom and the demands of modernity.

And yet, the irony endures: even as we embrace progress, we ache for what is gone. We long for civility, for communal ties, for a sense of place—even knowing the old ways were flawed, sometimes cruel. The Old Town’s narrow quarters carried disease and hardship, yet they pulsed with shared life. The New Town’s rational squares promised progress, but also introduced isolation. Downton Abbey evokes the same bittersweet nostalgia, reminding us that polished silver and fine china were purchased at invisible costs, yet still stirring our wistfulness for continuity and honor.

The image of Robert Crawley in the finale captures this poignantly. Before moving into the Dower House, he pauses at the great estate’s exterior. He lays his hand upon the cornerstone, its weathered surface alive with memory. In that gesture, he blesses what is passing—not only a house, but a way of life, with its duties, its values, its flaws. He says goodbye even as he carries something of it forward.

All of us must answer: Who am I? Time changes us. It rearranges floors in a tenement, redraws streets, rewrites roles, and reshapes families. Yet it leaves echoes in the stones—stories, photographs, farewells.

I also live with layers: Cherokee and French, Dutch and English, Christian and skeptic, cowboy and Wildcat. I reach with fingers outstretched, touching the walls of my home and memories, my unique abbey. The scars, wrinkles, pain, and joy are etched deeply in the stones, whispering, asking who I might become.