Friday, May 09, 2008

My fallible memory

My memory is getting short, shorter by the day it seems and thus I am very thankful for this blog. I need to record things, family moments mostly, so that in a few years, let's be honest a few months if not weeks, I can see what we've been doing and relive the best moments and even the worst of our days. Mostly, I want to be able to read about my most special times with John and the girls because lord knows I can't trust myself to remember even when I think, in the moment, that I'll never forget "this very moment, right now; I'll commit it to memory and never forget." A few days later, it is likely filed away and starting to fade. I hate that. I hate that about fatigue. My memory is the first to go.

I feel lately like I'm living in a fog. I can't quite see behind me as clearly as I should. I want to relive special moments from Emily's babyhood but they are blurry and that bothers me so much. And so, the blog and my thankfulness for it. Of course it's usefulness as a memory jogger actually requires me to use it to record things, certainly more often than I do now. Like yesterday when I was walking with Hope to the sand box just a short walk down the path behind our house. She was holding my hand like she almost always does when she walks beside me. Her hand was cold. Her fingers were pointed up towards my arm. All four of them. Her thumb was squeezing the back of my hand. She was wearing her blue fuzzy Guess hoodie jacket that I bought used for Emily when Emily was tiny. It has matching pants that make her look like a teddy bear. Hope loves that jacket, even though it is a little too small for her now, and always wants the hood to be up, which it was yesterday. Her hair, her luscious curly, corn silk hair, was sticking out the front all around the hood. Her cheeks were framed by the tight hood making them seem even bigger than they are, which seems almost impossible. They are huge without the hood. They were rosy. Her eyes were glued to the sand box in the distance as she tottered along in her traditional sideways slightly pigeon-toed gait. She walked the entire way without asking me to pick her up. That was the first time she walked the whole way. When we got there she made me pretend hamburgers and stew and dessert and whatever I asked for. She climbed out through the window of the sandbox house. I carried her home and she buried her face in my shoulder because of the cold wind and I nestled my nose into those wisps of hair escaping from her hood.

I never want to forget it. I will though and when I do, I'll read this and enjoy that I loved that moment and planned to remember it for the rest of my life.

2 comments:

little b said...

ok, this made me cry a bit. it's soooo sweet.

Shan said...

What a sweet post.