Ordinary moments

When I was a kid, I used to wonder if it was possible to hold onto ordinary moments. You know, if you tried hard enough. If you closed your eyes and memorized every single thing about it, painted the scene in great detail in your mind and then just willed yourself to remember. Could you? In twenty years? Remember the way you bent down and scratched your knee just before getting hit by that dodge ball. Remember the way that grilled cheese and tomato soup tasted while you watched an episode of Boy Meets World. Remember using your finger to doodle on the fogged up car window as Santa Baby played on the radio. Because where do they all go? All the seemingly forgettable everyday moments? No matter how unremarkable they were, I wanted them. I wanted them all. I still want them all. Thirteen years later and I've really only managed to hold onto what feels like a few measly scraps. For whatever reason, only certain moments stick.

So I thought about this earlier as I stood in the playground of our local elementary school, while Linus and Jedi played. I thought about how hard I tried at age ten to hold onto things, how hard I still try to hold onto things-- how I take photographs and blog and make lists and scribble thoughts onto the pages of notebooks, how tirelessly I've integrated this practice of preservation into my daily life. And then I sat there in that playground and did what my ten year-old self used to do. I memorized the moment. Cool concrete beneath me, sand in my shoes, sun on my face. Sadie sleeping against my chest. My mom at the picnic table just a few feet away. The sound of children laughing. A breeze in the air. Golden leaves falling around me. One moment folds into the next and then it's over. And I am left hoping maybe this one will stick.