Day Thirty Six: Fire and Rain

I'm stuck in Nostalgia. Perhaps you've been to this country?


It started yesterday when someone sent me a "friend" request on one of those social networking sites (that shall remain nameless despite its transformation into a verb). The name, the face, the mutual "friends"--why couldn't I remember this person?

I began a search, a mining of artifacts from my childhood that precisely takes up the space of one old gun box. (Don't worry--I bought the wooden gun box at a flea market without the actual guns. It's just a really cool piece of furniture.) After an hour of reading some bad sixth grade poetry and strange letters from high school friends, I forgot about the reason for this little trip down memory lane and breathed in stale paper and dried flowers for almost three hours.

When my parents moved out of my childhood home, they gave me two shopping bags filled with my things: medals, certificates, photo albums, diaries, and boxes of letters. I purposely left all those things behind when I moved into my own place, and completely forgot about them by the time I got married. When it was all "re-gifted" to me, I unceremoniously dumped everything into that gun box and never went through it. That is, until yesterday.

I won't wax on about simpler times and the happiness of being young/innocent. That's a bit trite, and I really don't want to bore myself let alone anyone else who reads my blog. But I do want to share my next "mixed tape" song, which sums up not only my feelings about my Mom but those who I have yet to see again, if I am blessed to do so.

There was this one note from a friend that caught my attention, a person who was so sure that he would see me again. We had been friends since the third grade and shared many laughs throughout elementary and high school. My Mom even took a picture of us on graduation day, with our stupid grins and bad hairdos. I found it among my things. I haven't seen him since.

When we are kids, we take things for granted, like seeing certain individuals because they've been part of our lives for as long as we can remember. Back then, my friend couldn't imagine a time when he wouldn't see me again. And I couldn't imagine a life without my Mom.


9. James Taylor/Fire and Rain