looking through me

Tag: memories

December 28, 2014

tangible memories

I’m wearing my favorite flannel shirt. Well, it’s my only flannel shirt . . . actually . . . it’s the only flannel shirt I’ve ever owned. It was a Christmas present when I was 11, and I’ve given up on ever growing into it.

Every time I put it on memories slip on with it. I remember my 7th grade camp counselor borrowing it. I remember wearing it at end-of-summer beach bonfires. I remember wearing it in Vegas—like putting on home when home felt undefined.

I hold on to things.

The Bible in my glove compartment is in its third car.

The lunch bag my dad decorated for my fifth grade fieldtrip to see Beauty and the Beast at the El Capitan theatre has moved with me to Nevada and back.

The notes my former students wrote to me are tucked away under my bed waiting for the day I’m ready to read them.

They’re more than mementos. They’re tangible reminders of who I was and who I am, where I’ve been and where I am now. They’re places and faces. They’re shorthand for the lessons I need to remember.

I’m too good at forgetting. I forget I wasn’t alone at camp or in the desert. I forget the Word is always at hand. I forget how deeply loved I am by my father . . . and my Father. I forget why I invested in students. Or maybe I didn’t really know.

Then I pause to look around, and the tapestry of memories I’ve woven plays my story back to me again.

 

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December 17, 2014

Christmas . . .

I unwrap past Christmases with each ornament and hang them on the tree. The bell from Uncle Bob. The angel Mom gave me one of the Decembers I was too sick to decorate with the family. The ornaments Dad brought back from business trips. The ones I made in preschool. The heavy 125-year-old orbs passed down from Great-Grandma. The ornaments chronicle my life almost as well as the Christmas album does.

One year Mom turned a fat, ordinary, three-ring binder into a padded, fabric-ed, lacy album. Decades later I still love flipping through the forty-plus years of Christmas pictures. Children have been born and had children themselves. Faces have disappeared. Traditions have evolved.

Tonight I sit in the dark as Christmas music fills the air and the lights of the tree play off the ornaments.

The memories are thick. Dozens of loved ones crowd against me on the loveseat. I hear the laughter and feel the hugs. I smell the lingering scents of dinner and see the platter of cookies and candies Mom has made. I hear my brother’s voice reading the gospel account. I catch a glimpse of the Advent calendar with all the flaps of the story opened. I feel my own conflicted longing for the quiet that will descend once the crowd leaves and the longing to never be parted from these ones I love.

Tears threaten to spill from my blurring eyes. Because this year some of those faces will only be present in the album.

The tree lights smudge. As I blink the tears away I see the crèche on the hearth. In the dim light I catch the outline of a kneeling Mary cradling the infant Jesus.

And in that yet to grow and die and rise again representation of my Savior hope overcomes my pangs of grief. The sorrows are real. As are the joys. And someday this dying world will be made new. The tears will be wiped away.

Jesus is coming . . . again.

 

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