With all the graduation pictures floating around, I’ve been taking a trip down memory lane myself. My oldest graduated from college this past December. Mid year graduations come with much less fanfare and can easily get lost. But less fanfare is more our style, so it felt very appropriate. Rest assured we did celebrate, and we celebrated BIG, just the four of us.
We tend to prepare for the making of memories in these big moments. For milestones like graduations, and birthdays, and holidays, —we bring out the camera and put on the right shirt. But more often than not, memories are made in the mundane, every day pace of life. Life happens in those small moments that pass us by, hardly noticed.
Sometimes those memories come to us at the oddest of times. Recently, when I was driving it started to rain. Without a thought I reached to turn on my windshield wipers. I look over and no longer see the college grad sitting beside me. In my mind I see the little boy who couldn’t say windshield wipers. For the longest time it was windshield-shines. It’s hard to even write that word as he pronounced it, because he would say it really fast and all together, as if one word. It was more like: winshielshines. For years we all said it. Winshielshines. I can’t even remember at what point we stopped. But without warning that little part of childhood slips away, it gets tucked back in some corner of our mind.
Sometimes I think when we pull that memory back out, it’s grander. The stress, and the crazy that surrounds the making of that memory just sort of magically falls away. Thank goodness. As a mother, that brings me a lot of comfort. Even though my kids have their share of memories that aren’t stellar, I’m hopeful that the majority of them are good. And that the crazy surrounding that memory will not negate the goodness of it.
How do you slow down and savor those moments when they’re in the making? Isn’t that the million dollar question? I wish I knew the answer. When you’re in the middle of sleepless nights, and housework, and homework, and work-work, and running little people here and there, it all becomes a blur. Being tired all the time sort of inhibits the ability to savor life. I believe it’s an elusive answer that only reveals itself with hindsight vision.
I choose to enjoy the memories that come to mind without pining for that day of long ago. I’m embracing today, knowing that everything changes. That little boy who wanted a Spongebob Squarepants tie for his Kindergarten graduation now has an aversion to ties. The little boy who would sing his heart out in front of his peers at the grade school spring concert, won’t sing for an audience of one, today. That little boy who used to say windshielshines now operates the windshield wipers in his own car. He’s trying to make his own mark on this world. And I’m trying to enjoy this season too, knowing like all the others, it’ll pass so quickly.
Its a bittersweet time for the many graduates today that are not able to enjoy the march to “Pomp and Circumstance,” nor the stage, nor the handshake. But it’s also a reminder that the most authentic memories are made without pomp and without special circumstance; they won’t be staged or made for social media. They’ll live within each of us. And that’s where our most important work takes place, making memories that will become etched and framed and carried within our hearts.
