Moments in time

Has there ever been an event that has caused you to stop and look at moments in your life?  Something happens that makes you think of all the memories that are engrained in your head for all time.  That happened to me yesterday....


It's like a wave comes over me, I start to remember specific moments in time as if there is a picture book in my mind.  I flash back to sitting with my dad in our living room and just hanging out and talking.  I can see it so clearly, his cut off jean shorts and flip flops, the smell of the warm, humid summer air blowing through the front window, the tv on in the background, my sisters running around playing loudly, my mom cooking in the kitchen.  Memories of my childhood and my home are some of the best I have and I cherish them.  My dad's laugh when me, my sisters, and him would pull a prank on my mom and her smile when we did it.  The early morning sound of my parents talking in the dining room with quiet, tired voices and the sound of them making coffee while the three of us were still in bed.  The sound of the high school marching band and football team practicing across the street.  It's like all of this can be lumped into one big wonderful picture that I never want to forget.


First grade, the year I became forever shy.  I was talking to a person behind me in class and the teacher stopped and sternly asked me to be quiet or she would make me go into the hall.  After that, I barely spoke a word in class....ever.  Funny, it's not like it was out of line for her to say something but it affected me so much.  But I can see the teacher, and I can see myself in that moment.


Flash forward to high school, I can see the first time I met my best friend Kendra in 9th grade math class.  Her oversized plaid flannel shirt, her wariness at meeting me, a new person.  I have this mental picture of her and I sitting in Algebra at our desks talking for the first time :)

Then skip ahead to the very moment I realized I was in love with Richard.  Out with none other than my best friend Kendra at the bar, she decides to call Richard from my cell phone to see if he wants to come out.  I haven't spoken to him in months at this point.  He doesn't answer.  I can see Kendra and I sitting at the table with our beer feeling so grown up, I can see me answer the phone when Richard calls back and I ask him to come meet us there.  It is when he enters the bar that it hit me.  It was as if I had never seen him before in my life, as if I knew nothing about him, but I knew everything about him.  I can picture him as if it were yesterday.
I have a slideshow in my head, still shots of each moment from the day Ricky entered our lives.  Richard's face when I woke him up at 1:00 a.m. to tell him I had a strange feeling in my stomach.  :)  Richard sitting on the sofa next to my bed with such a concerned, worried look on his face.  Him pacing while I pushed.  The very moment that Ricky was born, when they took him away from me to the table, it's like a still photo, black and white because it was so dark in the room, I can see my baby still curled in the fetal position being whisked away.  Richard looking into my eyes while they were cleaning up our baby, holding my hand and asking me if I was okay.  It was all so surreal, the pictures in my head portray calmness, quietness, slow motion, when in reality it happened so fast.  But every moment is lumped into one big beautiful collage in my mind.

Of course there are many events that occured between these things that were just as memorable, I just chose to talk about these in particular.  It's nice that I have these memories so that when things happen that make me sad or feel alone, I have these to turn to, to show me that I have had a beautiful life, I have people that love me, and there is only more to come.  A moment lasts all of a second, but a memory lives on forever.....