Reading the comments the other day from the "Life is Short" post, I realized you were on to something. Maybe the best and greatest that we take with us when we go isn't a punch the air kind of day, it's a collection of tiny memories that will replay on a loop for us. And Angela pointed something else out-a lot of the bigger days that you may remember are actually no good rotten very bad days.

She has a point.

In my ongoing effort to continue to get healthy (and if you read here, I'm going to drag you with me), I try to focus on the positive. I'm not happy in my career, but I have a great family. I may not like my looks but I sure like my dog. I have a series of failed relationships but I have a pretty good man now. I'm not getting any younger but my skin is holding up so bathing in vats of virgin blood can be put off for a while longer.

And even though my entire life has been one giant whirlwind, a series of lurching from disaster to disaster, I like to imagine that someday, when I'm old and gray and alone, I'll have little memories that I'll hold in my hand, memories like little marshmallows, and the longer I hold them the stickier they'll get.

I look around me and wonder what kinds of things people will hold close to them later in their lives. For Donna it's maybe the sweetest horse. For Statia, it's perhaps getting through the roadblock of infertility and making me an Auntie (for those who follow her, I'll spill the beans. She's giving birth on the 17th of March because it's St. Patrick's Day, and the truth is, she's giving birth to Lucky the Leprechaun-I hear her Leprechaun comes out not just magically delicious, but also with a bowl of cereal ready for the breastfeeding service. Shhhhh-you heard it here first.) For Teresa, it may be about knitting that perfect piece, and for Lindsay it may be pouring a bowl of General Mills cereal (Booberry FOREVER!)

Different things for different people.

So I thought about my life and my list. Now, there was this film I remember watching a long time ago called Brainstorm. The key point of this film (besides putting aside the disbelief that Natalie Wood and Christopher Walken could get it on) is what the memories on one's life look like when you cross from life to death (bear with me here, I'm not about to start peddling crystals or anything). A scientist in the film has a heart attack, and she records her memories as she's dying. Her memories are everything from the good to the bad, the young to the old, and as she passes away her memories become clearer and clearer...but they are everyday, ordinary memories. A lifetime of the day-to-day, little glimpses of just getting on with that thing called life.

You're probably right-the little things are the things I want to take with me. Of course I want to remember what it was like to get engaged in Whistler, but I also want to remember what it was like to feed the birds from my hand half-way up Whistler mountain. I want to remember settling in to this house we have, but I also want to remember laughing and painting the kitchen and drinking wine on the mattress in the living room as we dreamt big dreams.

My little memories maybe mean nothing to anyone-playing Frogger on the Atari with a braid swinging down my back. Swimming with Melissa in the freezing cold New Zealand waters as dolphins dove and splashed around us. Running through the bluebells with Gorby. Catching fireflies on a hot summer night as a kid. Drinking wine and watching a Santorini sunset with Angus. Having my hand held in Bangkok. Walking across Waterloo Bridge. Hovering as I snorkel, in perfect peace and quiet, in the Indian Ocean off the coast of the Seychelles. Making risotto. IM'ing with a friend.

These are what I want to take with me.

I've had punch the air days. I got jobs, I got loves, I got good tests, I got success. Those days, they may not stay with me. I had a punch the air day yesterday, actually, but in time that exact day may fade and be replaced by an ordinary image. And I'm ok with that. I'm going to try to imagine that my life is a big corkboard, and the soft crunchy sound that a pushpin makes as it gives way into the cork is where I place each memory. Riding a bicycle as a kid, with a banana seat and those plastic streamer things flowing from the handlebars - *crunch*. That night we stayed up all night talking, and I'd never talked like that before - *crunch*.

Maybe someday I'll use this blog to look back on the everyday, and in the everyday, I'll find amazing comfort.

-H.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 08:52 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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