February 28, 2011
I love writing and find that I never take the time to do it. I’ve always wanted to be the girl who wrote in her diary every night, but never lasted longer than a week. I would love to sit down and write lyrics and music to a song, as my younger sister often does, but have never found myself successful at that task. As a teacher, I know its importance and my students, through their first year of formal school in Kindergarten, develop into pretty good little writers. However, it is something that people get better at the more they do it, and often some kids don’t enjoy writing.
When I think about what I enjoy writing about, it’s memories, family, and those that I love. I’ve definitely had a “sunshine and lollipops” childhood and life so far. Of course everyone has their ups and downs, but thankfully, my “downs” have been few and manageable to deal with. Some memories I know I could write on and on about are my summers with my family and Mom’s twin’s family at the lake cabin we rented, camping in the mountains, my Grandma Jean, family Christmases, college memories, my husband and I’s dating days, and our wedding day. My day-to-day life is fairly simple and would not give me that much to discuss, besides my career journey, this masters class, and my husband and two “furbabies” (two Sheltie dogs named Cody and Riley).
It’s memories that make me come back to something I’ve had long discussions with my dad about and tried to comprehend. It’s something that’s, on the surface, easy to understand, but its depths are so complex. For some reason, when I reminisce, I always come back to time. It goes slow when you want it to pass quickly, it flies by when you’re enjoying the situation. Yet no matter how it seems in the present, time quickly passes anyways. My sister, Ronnie, who’s almost 6 years younger than I, will turn 18 in one week. How did we get from my mom’s belly growing, her exciting birth, and feeling so proud to feed her a bottle, to a beautiful, talented, successful young woman, about to graduate and begin her own college career? Wasn’t it just me who was graduating and beginning college in a big city?
One evening, about 6 months after our wedding day, my husband and I were watching “The Wedding” episode of the sitcom The Office. In it, characters Pam and Jim are finally getting married. Throughout the episode, they decide to take “mental snapshots” so that they can remember specific moments of their day. This made me literally burst into tears. My husband had no idea why I was crying over a TV wedding! I explained that I felt like we missed the chance on our day to take these mental pictures. He helped me realize that we didn’t literally have to hold up an imaginary camera and say “click.” Our wedding day, so full of family, love, and happiness, was perfect, and we both have vivid memories from it. We took our own mental snapshots, without the pretend camera. Because of this silly little instance, I try to remember to take more mental snapshots. While hiking together this past summer, I “clicked” on the beautiful scenery, the feeling of my husband’s hand in mine, the smell of the fresh mountain air, and even what I was thinking at that moment. My best friend, Beth, and my closest male cousin, Garett, will be getting married in less than two weeks. I want to share my story with them so that they take in their own mental snapshots of their day, and I plan to “click” on many memories. I feel blessed that my cousin (my mom’s identical twin’s son; so we always said we were really half- siblings J) is marrying my best friend, and I look forward to seeing our families blend and celebrate together.
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