Spin Cycle

Today I have been awash in memories.

This morning I woke up, and I was fairly cold as my dad is a polar bear and keeps the house pretty frigid. (OK, maybe it's because my parents program the heat to turn down during the day when nobody's here...it's pretty economical really, but I'm still going to blame my dad, who is indeed a polar bear.) I went to look for a sweatshirt in my old room (now "The Lounge," also known as the cat's room...only bearing slight resemblance to my bedroom from high school) and opened my old closet. It was as if a football team of memories tackled me. I found old prom dresses, old halloween costumes, old favorite outfits. I found a long-sleeved tshirt from when UVA won their 4th NCAA title in a row in men's soccer. I found sweatshirts from when I went shopping for colleges before senior year and bought a sweatshirt at the places I fell in love with (one in particular: Revelle, a sub-college of UCSD, where I got in but ended up not attending). I probably stood there for a half hour just filtering through the old clothes, recovering old memories and smiling.

For dinner this evening, my mother invited her pastor to dine with us. Elizabeth is very cool, with a great sense of humor, and we ended up getting my parents to reminisce about their wedding. This in turn led to a photo album being brought out, and I got to see pictures of my parents when they were younger than I am today. They told stories from before I was born...one that stands out in particular is when my mother went to the emergency room for a fish bite. That's right, a fish bite. My dad had a piranha, and my mom had an unfortunate incident while cleaning the fish's tank...and subsequently became the first person in the history of the University of Virgina's hospital to be treated for a fish bite. Can you just imagine? My mom calls my dad and says, "Honey, I'm going to the hospital. The fish bit me." Unless you know that my dad is crazy and has some sort of man-eating fish, it sounds a little bizarre. I suppose this explains some things about me, though, eh? =)

I rounded out the evening at a local brewery/restaurant with some friends from high school. Some of these friends I've recently reconnected with in Boston, some I've kept in touch with over the years through college and these years of "real world" life you hear so much about. But, as is the case in a small town like Charlottesville, there were others we knew there. I'm 99% sure my best friend from elementary school was there with her sister, but I was too timid to approach her and say, "Hey, Audrey, what's been happening the past 17 years?" I mean, REALLY, where does the conversation go after that? There were a few guys from our high school there as well, some who recognized me and some who didn't...one who was a few years behind me and once offered me $20 to make him his own personal batch of the cookies I made the boys' lacrosse team each week...he tried to pseudo-hit on me. Very amusing.

In the end, today was about reminiscing, I suppose. Can you really avoid things like that when you go home? Do I have any profound thoughts to share? Probably nothing that you haven't seen in a movie or read in a book or thought yourself...what a difference 10 years makes...so much changes and yet, then again, so little at the same time.

I guess one of the things I've really come to grips with this year is just this simple fact: whatever happens today, there will always be a tomorrow. If you can really embrace this fact, and all that it entails, the little stuff just slides away. I lost my purse at the hospital a few weeks ago, and was an hour away before I realized it. In the end, I tried several ways to find it through contacting people on the phone, and when those efforts proved fruitless I just surrendered to the fact that there was nothing I could do that day...I would be there tomorrow to check it out, and in the meantime, why let it ruin my evening? I'm not saying I can do this with everything, but I'm trying really hard to gain that ability.

Tonight, I'm going to take all these memories from the day, and as I sleep they'll mix in the spin cycle and create their own special meaning for me. In the meantime, have a happy Thanksgiving, y'all!