robert and i drove down the road yesterday in the balmy carolina summer air. the kind that hangs stagnant without relief of breeze. we rolled the windows down and pablo stuck his head out, catching the sunshine and heat square on the nose.
and as we drove, we tried to remember last week. what we ate for supper, how we spent our evenings. for events that happened less than seven days ago, we had a terribly difficult time recalling their details. between the day-in, day-outs of how was your day, lie on the couch, bachelorette on monday, bacon and tomato sandwiches every evening on the porch, crash on the couch in that old blanket, lunch breaks at the grocery store, midnight trips to the water bowl with pablo, thrift store perusing, etsy selling, sleepy, tired, exhausted workdays we just lost track.
but that's the glory of it, sometimes. the forgetting.
letting the seconds and minutes pass, but holding on to the hours.
i think it's one of God's greatest blessings and one of life's greatest kindnesses that some things we forget. at least, some things lose their momentum with the passage of time. a few months ago, i ran into the boy who called me a stutterer in front of the entire lunchroom in the seventh grade. it wasn't bad, and i wasn't mad at him anymore. that sinking feeling in my gut eventually rose. and i can look at the facebook page of my sweet friend who passed away in that awful car wreck in 2007 without my computer screen fading away behind blurred, watery vision. it doesn't mean i will become friends with that boy, or that i don't miss and think about my friend every single blessed day. it just means i forgot the initial shock, and for that i am grateful.
but then, there are things i can't hold onto tight enough. memories of my mama running down the hill behind our house. my day out with dad, when i got my first cast. the time against that old honda, when robert turned to me on my driveway and whispered that he loved me. my first job interview, and the letter that followed.
i want to get to the end of my life with a storage vault of such hours. an arsenal of time. that i can slowly unlock and resavor. but maybe, after all, it's the seconds and minutes we save (the good ones at least).
if we're lucky, we'll get to the end with one good, solid hour. of a million nanoseconds of love.
that's all i can really hope for, come to think of it.
6 comments:
I just wrote a blog post yesterday trying to recap my 33rd year of life. I love that I've blogged because it's so easy to forget such sweet moments. but yes...also grateful that so much is so quickly forgotten!
I blogged the other day that "remembering was painful" in reference to my miscarriages. It seems like, now that they've happened, everything is in reference to them. Later that night, my husband and I were talking and I remember saying how nice it was that I was forgetting-- not forgetting them, but forgetting the faces of my midwives who declared my babies dead, and how many beats per minute the first time we saw their blinking hearts on an ultrasound. I'm forgetting those small details. They're written down and I'll never forget my three babies, but it's nice not to hear "February 13th" or "119" without crumbling. God knows I need to forget some of those things.
Such wise writing from you again my friend. Another beautiful post. You really do have such wise, wise thoughts.
Oh my, my heart goes out to Audrey above. Hugs.
can you just write a book of this goodness so i can buy it and put it on my shelf to have forever?
This made me cry. So beautiful.
This is a really beautiful post.
You also made me miss the Carolinas (my dad lives there, so I spent my summers in the South).
Post a Comment
thank you for stopping by! have a blessed day:)