Things I Need To Remember

Sometimes, I feel like I’m getting old too fast.  I can remember being 16 like it was yesterday.  I remember the hopes, the fears. And I stop, and I take a look around, and I can’t believe it’s been 8 years.  Simply cannot believe it.

I’ve written before about what I’ve learned in that time, and I don’t want to cover all that ground.  I have a feeling most of you don’t really care about that anyways.  But there is something I haven’t talked about here that is about due.  This might become a series of entries, I’m not sure yet.  At any rate, there will only be one right now,  I simply don’t have time for more.  I’d be working on something that’s due, but after my Greek midterm earlier in the evening, my brain is basically fried from working on anything that requires deep intellect. 

I remember growing up on Hawthorne, and looking out the big picture window in the summer time, and watching Mom mow the lawn, and Dad be digging something up, and Randy riding that ridiculous little green big wheel without using the pedals.  The lawn was filled with dandelions, and the split rail fence in the front yard was red.  I remember the fence in the backyard that surrounded the garden, and that day that my parents, Like Aunt Polly in the Tom Sawyer story, made me whitewash the fence.  I remember making excuses and my parents pointing me right back to the fence.  I remember when I got my file cabinet for Christmas when I was 7, and how excited I was.  I remember taking all the papers from my briefcase (a Christmas present when I was 6), and hastily throwing them into alphabetical files, so that I could keep track of them.  I remember going to the public library downtown, and pulling out every book on Dinosaurs they would let me take, and copying all the graphs and charts out of the books, and putting them into my dinosaur file.

I remember the year that we had a blizzard that got school cancelled for a couple of days, and building the coolest snowforts ever.  We lived at the end of a deadend, and there were mountains of snow at the end of the street, right in my front yard.  I remember spending a whole week working on that fort, and how proud Randy and I were of it.  And I remember the day that those middle school kids came with hammers and destroyed it.  I remember Mom and Dad holding me back from running outside to ask them, “Why?”  I asked Mom and Dad why anyone would want to destroy what Randy and I had spent so long working on.  They simply pointed to them and told me to remember it.  Mom, if you’re reading this, I remember.  I’ve never forgotten.  Thank you.

I remember walking around Adams like I owned the place.  I was in first grade.  I used to get in competitions with Scott Berg to see who could get the most checks after our name in Mr. Nobinsky’s class.  I remember telling Rachel and Alyssa that I was trying to decide who I liked better, and that if they could figure out ways to convince me, I’d be willing to accept their delegates.  It didn’t make any sense, but I heard the word on TV, and I had to use it somewhere, right?  I remember Mrs. Hinaus’ class, when she gave us the quote from Krista McAuliffe, the teacher onboard the Challenger when it exploded.  I remember that entire day, and how it was all over the news.  I remember being frustrated and not understanding why I had to miss the Transformers for this.  Mom explained it to me.

I remember playing in the sandbox at Grandma and Grandpa’s, and looking out across the backyard, past the garden in the springtime when the big planters kicked up dust on the field as they planted.  I remember Grandpa with the rotortiller in the back yard, tilling the rows, working the soil, with Randy walking not even a step behind.  I remember Nicole on the swing, and chasing Randy around the backyard with that green spring mounted dart gun.  I remember the smell of the earth, and the squirm of the potato bugs as we caught them and put them in Gerber baby food jars.  Grandpa told us he’d give us a nickel for every jarful of potato bugs we caught.  I remember the smell of the gas he poured on the bugs to kill them.  And I remember the rusty old coffee can he kept them in.  I remember the night I sat on Grandpa’s lap.  Grandma was gone, and Grandpa and I had the house to ourselves.  I remember sitting with him watching the Independence Bowl with him in his room (a previous forbidden place) on his tv, with a bowl of vanilla ice cream.  I remember the day right around that time when I told Grandpa, “No,” for the first time.  I remember the spanking I got that day, and I remember crying because I knew I deserved it.

This is a series that will continue. I need to remember this kind of stuff more.  I can’t tell you how freeing and emotionally real this was writing it down.  (Mom, if you’re reading this, you’re not the only one who needed a tissue, so don’t feel too bad.)  I’m reminded of the quote I used at the end of my series of entries a while back from American Beauty:

They say your entire life flashes in front of your eyes when you die. It’s not really your entire life… It’s just the moments that stood out… And they’re not the ones you’d expect, either…The moments you remember are tiny ones, some you haven’t thought of in years… If you’ve thought of them at all… But in the last second of your life, you remember them with astonishing clarity… Because they’re just so… beautiful… that they must have been imprinted, on like a cellular level…
For me it was, lying on my back at Boy Scout camp, watching falling stars…
And yellow leaves from the ginkgo trees that lined our street…
Or my grandmother’s hands, and the way her skin seemed like paper…
And the first time I saw my cousin Tony’s brand new GTO…
And the way I felt when Angela first smiled at me…
I guess I could be pretty pissed about what happened to me… but it’s hard to stay mad, when there’s so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I’m seeing it all at once, and it’s too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that’s about to burst…
And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain and I can’t feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life…
You have no idea what I’m talking about, I’m sure… but don’t worry…
You will someday.
 -from American Beauty