So goes life in Nebraska.
Sitting now on the deck,
that same husband and I with matching laptops, I’m listening to the crackly
sounds of fireworks – actually eager for darkness when we’ll quietly shoot off
a few before retiring.
Previous years we’ve blown things up with friends. Tonight
with a jetlagged husband recently returned from a trip to China, we’re just
hanging out. I’m hopeful he’ll be alert enough to join friends and me at a
showing of Jaws at the vintage
theater downtown tomorrow night.
In the summer of 1975, I saw Jaws in a theater in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan on my first-ever
movie date. An old dear high school friend asked me recently on Facebook how I
can remember that.
Honestly, I can’t remember anymore what day of the week it
is. Chances are, though, if you ask me where I was a month ago or 40 years ago
– I can tell you.
Keenly interwoven in the memories that unreel in my mind
like home movies is a sense of place.
This morning while Skyping with our older son – employed in
his ‘first ‘big boy’ job in Seoul, Korea, said son mentioned wanting to climb
mountains there before moving on to his next adventure. Already I can’t
remember the exact reference but he mentioned something about being a child of
Arizona. He was born in Flagstaff, which rises 6900 feet above sea level. We
moved to West Virgina when he was only two-and-a-half, but before leaving the
southwest we went on one memorable hike where he climbed up and down nearly 200
steps at a national monument minutes from our home.
I was born in Michigan and lived there 20 years, spent eight-and-a-half
years in Iowa, five-and-a-half in Arizona, 15 in West Virginia (where our
second son was born), and now tomorrow marks five years smack dab in the middle
of the country – Nebraska. The math adds up I think.
Missing every place I’ve been and embracing every place I am
is what I do.
In addition to remembering – always remembering.
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