Piecing Together the Puzzle

Well, so far my self-imposed prompt hasn't yielded the outpouring of blog wisdom that I was hoping to have. One of my friends has a knack for telling even the shortest of stories in minute detail, and I occasionally catch myself feeling like I'm doing the same and hoping that I'm not boring a patient and long-suffering listener. Through years of writing to page limits and column inches and editing myself (and others) mercilessly, however, I seem to have robbed myself of the ability to be verbose in print (or blog). None of the few memories that I have churned up to commit to this screen for posterity have yielded more than a few lines of text, despite all my efforts to embellish them.

As I pondered this dilemma, I realized that the problem lies not in my inability to recall the word-count-building details, but in the fact that I no longer see them as the most important element in capturing the meaning of the event. From where I'm standing now, funny moments have become bittersweet, painful experiences have been softened by time and distance, and I'm more inclined to try to fit the pieces of my past into the puzzle of the present than to see them in isolation. Part of me worries about losing sight of the person who lived all of those moments, but the rest of me finds it far more satisfying that I have a better picture of the person I am now.

Pearl Harbor Day

Ten Eleven years ago today (time flies when you're having fun, and even when you're not), I made a huge decision, and my life -- and other people's lives -- changed forever because of it. It wasn't a well-thought out decision, and it wasn't made in a calm, considered, rational way, but I knew then and have always known that it was the right decision, even if I made it in very much the wrong way.

Had I not made that decision on National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, I probably wouldn't remember the date at all, but over the years the two things have become tied together in my mind, and probably always will be. Another thing that I will always remember is how amazingly lucky I was to have good friends who supported me in my decision, and in the months and years that have gone by since then. The circle has changed and grown and shrunk over the years, but it has always been there to surround and encourage me.

On that particular day all those years ago, someone stepped up for me in a way that was completely unexpected, but very, very much appreciated. I've always remembered her kindness to me, and today I took a small step toward repaying it in a way that I hope will make the same difference in someone else's life.

A December to Remember

As I glanced at my "Blog Archive" after finishing my post yesterday, I realized that I've been blogging for almost five years now. If I blogged more than twice a year, I might actually have enough material for that memoir I'm going to write. The one where every chapter starts with a few lines from a country song.

Last night, as I sat musing at the end of a long and complicated week, I found myself wishing that I had a "prompt" to get me writing every day. The November of Thankfulness, had I thought of it soon enough, might have worked well to do just that. Starting it a whole month after the fact, however, seemed like even more of a cop-out than being a only few days late to the party.

The answer came, of course, from ESPN. As a member of the rapidly-shrinking DVR-less minority, I am forced to suffer through commercials with my SportsCenter. Which means that I spend every December being repeatedly reminded that every woman who is not yet married (with the notable exception of myself) is about to receive a sparkling surprise and every married woman will soon be peering out the window to find an oversized red bow on wheels parked in the driveway. I console myself with imagining that the squeals of joy are actually cries of dismay when the wife that discovers that the husband has traded in her trusty old reliable roadster for something with half the gas mileage and twice the insurance premiums, and stuck her with a $500 a month car payment to boot. Who, me, cynical? Not at all. But I digress...

So to get back to the point, at least once every evening I find myself stuck watching an ad for the "December to Remember Sales Event," during which men with more money than good sense can purchase bow-bedecked luxury sedans for their doting wives. And from this inspiration, a prompt was born.

So today I will -- I hope -- begin a month of writing each day about memories. Some significant, some humorous, some that maybe I would prefer to forget, but all part of the past that has brought me here.

I'm writing this post in the bar area of one of my favorite Italian restaurants, with one eye on the Alabama-Georgia game and one ear on the conversations of the waiters who keep drifting by to check out the score. College football has never been a huge part of my life, which is a comment akin to blasphemy here in the South, but I'm a long-suffering Philadelphia Eagles fan. Apparently I'm among friends, a fact that has just come to light as the bartender (who I overheard a few minutes ago mention that he was born in the same year that "Cheers" went off the air) and I shared a lament over the laundry list of injuries that have plagued us this year.

I could continue this post with a laundry list of memories about my football-watching exploits, from the time I almost started a bar fight with a 49ers fan in Omaha over a game that we ultimately lost, to the slightly more romantic road trip that I took to Nashville for a game that we lost, to my first game at the Linc -- in a luxury box, no less -- which we, imagine that, also lost. But I think I'll just end here and let one of these college football fans have my seat.