Friday, November 4, 2011

NBPM: Life Flashing Before My Eyes

Did one from October for today's: If your life flashed before your eyes, what are 5 moments you know would be included?

Things that have taken up a somewhat depressingly large portion of my life and therefore would be more of an honest representation of how I have spent my days:
  • Studying or attending class, daydreaming or doodling
  • Sleeping, trying to avoid waking up
  • Cleaning, cooking, eating, pooping, showering, etc
  • Riding on a train/bus/bike or in a car
  • Sitting in my office cube, working on the computer

Things I'd actually want to remember:
  1. I'm small. My hair in a long braid down my back. My grandpa, my mom's father, drives me and my brothers and sisters in the back of his rusty pickup truck up a dirt road in the mountains. The air is breezy, whipping strands of hair as we bump over potholes. He pulls over finally to a place with thick green beneath the trees. Gives us each a tin coffee can with a loop of string to hang around our neck. We pick blackberries - hundreds of them. So sweet. So fat. Careful of the thorns! Fill the cans up. Dump them into a big plastic bucket. Pick more. Empty the cans again. Almost as many going into my mouth as into the coffee can. Come home. Make blackberry crisp and jam and pie.
  2. At my parents' house. It's dinner time, maybe thanksgiving, maybe a birthday, maybe a relative has died and we are telling our favorite stories in rememberence. Piles of food, all types. Maybe there is a debate. Maybe there are some passions flying. Maybe we are laughing. Loosening our belt buckles or changing into sweat pants to make room for more food.
  3. I'm scrambling up a rocky mountain, half graceful, half totally out of control. There's a bit of wind rustling the leaves and there is some moss but not too slippery, and I'm feeling my way up and over and around boulders. Breathing slightly heavy from the intensity. Get to a clearing. The sun bursts out over the valleys. The view is extraordinary. I almost want to die from how awesome I feel.
  4. Sitting with friends or family around a campfire, possibly on the beach. Wearing a cosy sweatshirt. Breathe in. Smokey on the breeze. A tiny bit chilly on the backside, warm on the side facing the flame. Crunchy pine needles or damp cool sand underfoot. Sky getting dark. Stars coming out. Some mosquitoes coming out too but we swat em. Maybe we are lucky, see some fireflies.
  5. Probably if anything important or life-changing ever happened to me, like meeting the person I was going to spend my life with or seeing my son or daughter for the first time, that would be the fifth thing.

2 comments:

Elizabeth said...

#4 sounds like summer solstice at the lake :) oh bad news about stonehenge: apparently you have to officially be a druid to go inside the stone circle for the solstice. I asked my British roommate how one becomes a druid and he said, "probably go to a meeting and drink blood or something". I will continue to look into this, but you might just have to come visit me sans stonehenge.
PS I like the rest of your memories too. I hope all of the time I spent waiting for buses doesn't flash before my eyes.

Katie said...

Oh yeah I meant to tell you actually that I'm not sure I'd be able to come at that time anyway. My little bro finishes up in CA around that time so some of us are flying out and then we're all going to go backpacking around in YoMo or Sierras or some place like that.

We'll have to discuss/figure out another time I can come visit you (and the Danes!)