My Weird Thing
I have this weird thing I like to do when I’m tired or just have a minute. I like to take a snapshot in my head of where I am. I look around at what I’m doing and think about all the implications of it, where it stands in my life. I take a sensory inventory of everything I can see or smell or feel: the air temperature, the season, the color of the sky. I try to take about five minutes to soak it all in. Then I frame it as a picture and hope I can call it up again some day.
I actually can recall many of my snapshots, partly because I’m self-conscious about doing it and partly because they seem to stay longer than other memories.
I started doing this a few years ago when for some reason, I was having vivid dreams about the house I grew up in. My mom told me once that as she got older, she forgot some of the things that had happened to her as an adult, but that the memories of her childhood became more alive. She especially remembered the house she grew up in. She told me this a year or two before she died, so when I started to do it too, I figured it was a sign and that I’d better enjoy these last few moments the best I could.
I started to think about how things felt when I was a kid. How completely involved I felt when it rained or snowed. How aware I was of summer and the feel of dirt under my feet. I remember standing over an anthill by our swing, how the dirt around edges of the anthill was a little gravely and hard. I could remember what it feels to have an ant run over my bare foot, I could even remember my foot being smaller! (I also remember life in the womb, but that’s another story.)
I remember going up the stairs from our kitchen and how secret I felt as the stairs curved and I was out of sight for a minute. I carved my name at the top of those stairs in a house that was sixty years old when I lived in it and is now almost a hundred years old. I remember what it felt like to rub my finger over that slight track when I came downstairs for breakfast.
This morning, Monday, as I drove up to Salt Lake in the rain, I took another snapshot. The sky was dark and curved over us. It felt like we were all in a separate world, together in our cars. Everyone was going to work, so many of the cars and trucks that passed had their names and occupations listed on them. It felt like a picture in a kid’s book with all the vehicles labeled “plumber,” “doctor,” “postman,” “school bus.” It felt intimate and at the same time, big-city. I was aware of the rush of traffic, the sheer number of people going to work. Ten thousand complete strangers doing the same thing at the same time.
My twenty-two-month-old granddaughter had a cold today, so I babysat her at her house instead of down here where I usually do. It’s not too serious, so we enjoyed snuggling up inside her fleece blanket, having a bottle or two. Since she was sick, her mom declared a moratorium in the war to get her off her bottle, a fabulous relief for both of us. My youngest son, a college student at the U, came over and spent the afternoon taking a nap on the couch. I watched a movie while they slept, instead of writing my article.
It was a great day. A day to keep a snapshot of.
I actually can recall many of my snapshots, partly because I’m self-conscious about doing it and partly because they seem to stay longer than other memories.
I started doing this a few years ago when for some reason, I was having vivid dreams about the house I grew up in. My mom told me once that as she got older, she forgot some of the things that had happened to her as an adult, but that the memories of her childhood became more alive. She especially remembered the house she grew up in. She told me this a year or two before she died, so when I started to do it too, I figured it was a sign and that I’d better enjoy these last few moments the best I could.
I started to think about how things felt when I was a kid. How completely involved I felt when it rained or snowed. How aware I was of summer and the feel of dirt under my feet. I remember standing over an anthill by our swing, how the dirt around edges of the anthill was a little gravely and hard. I could remember what it feels to have an ant run over my bare foot, I could even remember my foot being smaller! (I also remember life in the womb, but that’s another story.)
I remember going up the stairs from our kitchen and how secret I felt as the stairs curved and I was out of sight for a minute. I carved my name at the top of those stairs in a house that was sixty years old when I lived in it and is now almost a hundred years old. I remember what it felt like to rub my finger over that slight track when I came downstairs for breakfast.
This morning, Monday, as I drove up to Salt Lake in the rain, I took another snapshot. The sky was dark and curved over us. It felt like we were all in a separate world, together in our cars. Everyone was going to work, so many of the cars and trucks that passed had their names and occupations listed on them. It felt like a picture in a kid’s book with all the vehicles labeled “plumber,” “doctor,” “postman,” “school bus.” It felt intimate and at the same time, big-city. I was aware of the rush of traffic, the sheer number of people going to work. Ten thousand complete strangers doing the same thing at the same time.
My twenty-two-month-old granddaughter had a cold today, so I babysat her at her house instead of down here where I usually do. It’s not too serious, so we enjoyed snuggling up inside her fleece blanket, having a bottle or two. Since she was sick, her mom declared a moratorium in the war to get her off her bottle, a fabulous relief for both of us. My youngest son, a college student at the U, came over and spent the afternoon taking a nap on the couch. I watched a movie while they slept, instead of writing my article.
It was a great day. A day to keep a snapshot of.
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