Spring Feels Like Remembering

Maybe it’s the same kind of feeling that trees and flowers get, remembering how to shoot tiny leaves and buds out of themselves. Maybe it’s the bursting out into sunshine and cold spring air that makes them remember last spring and the spring before that and before that. Wherever that feeling comes from, I’m feeling it now. Spring makes me feel restless and reflective and a little bit like running away. I’m trying to figure out what it means…why spring makes me feel like this.

It’s like…that feeling you get when you see an old picture of yourself and you remember and it hurts. Even the happy pictures hurt. I watched our wedding video a couple nights ago. It was the first time I’d seen any of that footage. I kept pausing it to stare at that person in the video because I know it’s me, I see that it’s me…but I don’t recognize her. If I met her now, we’d be like strangers. I keep squinting at the screen, trying to x-ray her, remember what she was thinking and feeling and I can’t. If you asked me what my wedding day was like, I could tell you that I was so happy, that I couldn’t stop smiling, that it felt so quick and perfect but the girl in the wedding video…I feel like I don’t know her anymore.

Maybe it’s not like spring, at all. The way I remember and the way it was…they’re different. I wonder if a crocus wakes up in the spring and remembers all the other springs and thinks, this spring will be better than last spring…? Maybe crocuses just get to be brand new every spring and don’t have to feel the history of all the other springs that ever were weighing down on them like an impossibility.

But for me, spring is all about remembering. Every year, on that first warm-ish day when you don’t quite need a coat and birds sing Disney-style and suddenly everything smells like flowers…that’s the day I remember what it was like to plop fat garden snails into buckets, to dig in dark, earthy flowerbeds with Halmoni, to drive with the windows down and the radio up and think,  I want to drive with the windows down and the radio up every day forever, what it was like to be seventeen and falling in love, to be eighteen and planning a wedding, to be twenty-two and move far away from home, to be twenty-five and scared and tired and somehow okay.

I am one pathetic little crocus.
love, elizabeth

Lunch Date

When you’ve seen another person through some of the best and worst days of their life, the conversation seems to move from the present to the past and back without much effort. When Beth and I were talking over coffee yesterday, we started reminiscing about college, some of the good stuff, and some of the painful stuff, too. We laughed about things and then were surprised that we could laugh.

"Wow,” Beth said and smiled that smile she remembers something, “That’s the gift of time, I guess.”

And that just really stayed with me for the rest of the day and for the drive of home. Time is a gift. It helps us let go and it helps us hold on. And it made me realize that, when it comes to my friendship with Beth, no one makes me laugh like Beth, no one is quiet with me like Beth, no one else can do Gossip Girl impressions with me like Beth, no one understands me like Beth, and the most important thing she has ever given me is her time.

Living hours away from my best friend who, like me, has been in graduate school for the last three years means that when we both find time to sneak away and hang out for a few hours, we leap. So yesterday, we met in Cincinnati for lunch at Findlay’s Market. Findlay’s is the oldest public market in Ohio and reminds me a lot of North Market in Columbus. There were so many amazing building murals and great doorways to photograph so Beth had to put up with a bajillion pictures (the perils of hanging around a blogger).

So talk to me about the gift of time in your life. What has time allowed you to do, overcome, or become?

love, elizabeth

staring down my childhood

Yesterday was my second day in Colorado visiting my parents. One of the main purposes of my visit this summer is to go through my many belongings in storage and consolidate so that my mom and dad don’t have to drag my stuff with them when they move this year.

There’s something kind of a sadness digging through these boxes. Fortunately, I had Sarah around yesterday and she kept me laughing, reading diary entries aloud and drinking tea out of my extremely practical tea cups.

Sarah and I have been friends since 8th grade and sitting in my old bedroom, on bed sheets I bought in high school, reading old notes we passed each other, and finding trophies from summer camp and Avril Lavigne posters…it felt a little like time travel.

I don’t know why it’s painful exactly but it is. Sweet but ache-y.

Here are a few of my favorite things we uncovered. Things like my learner’s permit, my grandmother’s brooch, and one of my first love letters from Kyle…

What have you uncovered from your childhood?

love, elizabeth

Our Love Story (Chapter 3)

Have you read Chapter 1 and 2 yet? If not, you can catch up here and here. Here’s the third installment in the story of how Kyle and I met and fell into messy head-over-heels, leap-into-the-abyss, jump-in-front-of-a-train, live-in-a-garbage-can kind of love. Uh, just to clarify…we don’t ACTUALLY live in a garbage can. Okay.

Old School

A memory is what is left when something happens and does not completely unhappen. 

-Edward de Bono

I had an interesting conversation with one of my professors about memory. There’s a theory that memory never stands still, that the process of remembering is a process of re-making our memories. Every time we retell a story, the details take on new significance and reorder the way that memory is stored in our brains. And the more important a story is, the more we tell it, and the more it becomes something other than “just the facts” because we can’t actually remember “the facts” exactly as they are. If that’s true, then memory can never be a duplicate of what exactly was but instead our impression of what was, colored and shaped and shaded by all the experiences and knowledge that has come after. Most of us don’t go through our day-to-day interactions thinking, I better remember this moment exactly because it might turn out to be the conversation that changes my life. But somehow, when I look back at these early conversations with Kyle, they take on a huge amount of significance.

I do remember the day Kyle came back to rehearsal. “We’re glad Kyle was able to come back and join us!” Courtney said at the cast meeting at the beginning of the night, gesturing to the back of the theatre where Kyle sat. And guys, I seriously do not know what possessed me but I suddenly, impulsively, without any real thought, jumped out of my seat and turned fully around to look back at him. “Hi, Kyle! We missed you!” I think people laughed. I don’t remember. Before he could say anything, before I could even feel the red flooding my cheeks, I whirled around and sat back down in my seat. Not before I caught him smiling a little. Good, I thought. I’m glad he smiled.

We circled up for warm-ups and I remember our eyes locking for a second. His face was tired, sad. He hadn’t slept for days but I didn’t know that yet.

Our first conversation was later. Maybe the next day.

I had brought my old walkman to review my lines before rehearsal and I had snuck into the back of the dark theatre to practice. Down on the stage, Kyle was mopping. He looked up and out into the audience to where I sat, lifting a hand to shield his eyes from the bright stage lights. "That’s pretty old school,” he said, gesturing to the tape player in my hands.



And I reaaaaaaaaaaaaally wish I remember what I said back. Since I don’t know, I’ve taken the liberty of coming up with several options. You can vote below.

Did I say...

a. “Well, that’s just how I roll, bro-seph.”
b. “Your MOM is pretty old-school!”
c. “Hee hee, what?”
d. Long pause. “…Yeah.”

I remember wanting so badly to impress him. Something about the way he’d talked to me, the way he’d made that comment, so over the shoulder, off the cuff. It felt so cool. He felt so cool. Mysterious. Deep. Like he didn’t care that much. According to Kyle, he already cared a lot and was trying desperately to think of an icebreaker, any icebreaker.

So there we were. Both thinking the other couldn’t be cooler. But all of this was before the cast party…because let's not forget...I was still kind of dating a psychopath at the time.

To Be Continued

What do YOU think I probably said? Vote below!

love, elizabeth

A Reason for Blogging…

One of my favorite bloggers, Alana, recently wrote about why she blogs. You can go read about it here. Her post had me asking myself the same question. Why do I blog?

Source: annieee.tumblr.com via Elizabeth on Pinterest

 

Here’s a little list of reasons:

1. Having a blog is a good excuse to take pictures of everything.

2. My blog is my safe place. I work really hard to make sure it stays that way.

3. Blogging makes me a more adventurous person. (Hence the name of the blog…) I want to try new things and visit new places so that I have something interesting to write about!

4. Being a blogger has helped me practice introspection. Being able to confront my fears and struggles and the good stuff, too, is making me more self-aware (I hope).

5. My blog has given me the opportunity to connect with other writers and artists and creative people and I think it’s made me more open to learning about new things or ideas.

 

What about you? What keeps you blogging?

love, elizabeth

PS: Thank you, Alana, for prompting this post! Be sure to stop by and visit her at mrs. alana’s miscellany…