What we're left with are memories.
My earliest memories are disjointed, jumping from place to place and person to person. They make it seem like I grew up in fits and starts, jerking from 2 years to 4 years to 5 to 7 to 9. The earliest one I have is of a plane--is it any wonder, then, that I love them so much now? I was standing at the window, looking at the clouds quietly. I couldn't have been older than 2 or 3.
Another favorite of mine was one of the first days I spent in Connecticut. It was summer, the sky a brilliant, endless blue punctuated with lazy white clouds. The soccer field back then was near the elementary school, once that has since been leveled to make way for a newer, bigger elementary school. I stood there awkwardly, too proud to hide behind my mom, but too nervous to walk out by myself and meet the other girls and boys. Lucky for me, I didn't have to worry. The best friend I've ever had charged right up to me, short, freckled, fiery. "Are you new here?" For an 8 year old, she seemed to possess an awful lot of authority. I nodded timidly.
And then she said the five words that made all the difference in the world to me: "Wanna be my soccer buddy?" Samm and I have been inseparable ever since.
The moment that everything changed the first time has an innocent memory attached to it. I had just come home from school. It was one of the last days of 7th grade, and I made a beeline for the kitchen the way I always did. Dad intercepted me, coming up out of the basement to ask how my day was. We talked idly for a moment, and I made some kind of joke about the move we'd been worrying about for so long. Dad laughed, and then he looked me in the eye. "You do know we're moving, right? It's final. They want us there by August." I nodded and shrugged it off, raiding the pantry rather than considering the implications of what he had just said. I wonder what my dad expected me to do, if I surprised him by taking it so well. But when you're 12, the phrase long-term impact is a foreign one.
The goodbye--that one is still vivid. All four of my best friends showed up, even the one I wasn't sure would come. We all congregated in my driveway, laughing nervously and making small talk about meaningless things. The white SUV loomed behind us, crammed to bursting with suitcases, snacks, and entertainment. My mom was already crying but trying to laugh it off with her own friends while my brothers were in the car, whining about wanting to get a move on.
What sticks out most in that memory is the gap. The four of us--Kendall, Sam (there was only one m then), Maggie, and I--formed up one last time in a row for the final photo op, all of us smiling boldly, the picture of youthful friendship. And then I was walking to the car and getting in, but the other three still stood there, a hole in the middle where I should have been.
That hole has changed since then. My friend summed it up best: When I left, it was like I left a round hole. But since then, the hole has turned to a square, only I'm still a round peg. Yeah, I fit in some ways, but in the end, you can't fully get over so much time apart.
And since then, I've made new memories. So many that I don't know where to start. I can't imagine how it will be when I'm 80, what kind of state I'll be in then. Maybe that's why God graces us with forgetfulness by then, just so we can stay sane.
I think I'll be ready for that twisted sanity.
No comments:
Post a Comment