Tag Archives: memory

Time flies…

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I heard a statistic this morning that 25% of the people living in the United States weren’t yet born on the morning of September 11, 2001. I don’t know how accurate that number is, but fifteen years is a pretty long time and there do seem to be an awful lot of young people wandering around these days. To them, today’s date is something from a history book – about as tangible as the attack on Pearl Harbor or the burning of Washington. For those of us who lived through that gut wrenching September day long ago, though, it’s not so much history as it is something we carry with us every day.

If I were to walk into Great Mills High School today I could show you exactly where I was standing in the lobby when someone passed by and told me about an explosion at the World Trade Center. I commented wondering why they were running old footage of the bombing back in ’93. No, that wasn’t it, they assured me, dragging me down the hall to the library where a dozen people stood gape-mouthed around a television cart.

Bells ring. Class changes. I’m due back in my own room. Walk me into that room today and I can show you exactly where I was standing, elbows propped on my lectern, when we saw the first shaky images of the Pentagon burning and then when the towers fell. A lot of these students were military kids and maybe they “got it” more than some others. It might have been the first and only time in my brief teaching career I experienced a room of quiet searching, of contemplation, and of understanding that fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters would soon be going in harms way. There was no use trying to “teach” anything at that point. The best I could manage in that moment was just talking, individual conversations about what happened, about terrorism, and about what came next.

In my head the details of that morning are still every bit as vivid as that damned bright blue sky. I don’t expect that will ever change. Time flies, they say, but there are some moments, no matter how far past that stay with you forever.

Unexpectedly gone…

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It doesn’t happen often, but there are some times, some moments, when I just don’t have the right words. Anything I manage to get down on the blank page feels somehow inadequate to the moment.

Saying a real goodbye is always a struggle. Saying a final goodbye almost beyond my weak capabilities. Since long before our written histories, honoring the dead was a task for the living. Maybe it should be hard to put those ideas into words. Maybe, at its core, goodbye should be something felt rather than something said.

Another of the too rapidly diminishing links to my youth is unexpectedly gone. My memories, though, remain – of summers spent “far away”, of learning to love the Chesapeake and those creatures that dwell on, in, and above its depths, of family in better times. Those memories remain and loom ever larger in my mind, making it that much harder to think of saying the inevitable goodbye.

As I’ve worked and reworked these few sentences tonight I keep coming back to a quote first heard long ago. One of our greatest warrior philosophers offered that “It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.” While it may be foolish, I’ll mourn tonight – but I’ll also be well and truly thankful that such a man lived.

This world is a little less warm and its light a little less bright for his passing.

A memory of a different time and place…

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I won’t claim to have ever met Nancy Reagan. I did see her once, briefly, in the funeral procession for her husband as they drew down Constitution Avenue towards the Capitol. I remember thinking then how small and sad and utterly alone she looked even surrounded by the full pomp and dignity of a state funeral.

I stood in line a little more than seven hours to pass by the president’s casket as he lay in state in the rotunda. We don’t lionize our former first ladies like that or I’d probably be planning another long night queued up on the Mall to pay my respects. I was still a kid when President and Mrs. Reagan left the White House, but when someone refers generically to the president and first lady, theirs is the image my mind conjures . It’s hard to imagine a world in which the Reagans now both belong to history.

So this is my altogether too modest effort to mark the passing of a great lady, whose tenure as First Lady of the United States was marked with glamour, class, and a sense of unrestrained optimism in a country and a people. Like her husband, Mrs. Reagan was a good and faithful servant of the republic. I honor her life and memory.

Thanks for nothing…

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Due to a particularly long, tiresome meeting today I had papers with margins filled with good ideas – blog topics for days. Once I wrote them down, I promptly forgot about them because, after all, I wrote them down and didn’t need to memorize them. That would be entirely true if I didn’t then chuck my folder with all those margin notes onto a back corner of my desk and then promptly grab my keys and run for the door at the end of the day.

So here I sit with plenty of good ideas locked 20 miles away and utterly incapable of dredging any but the fuzziest recollection from my fragile human memory. This is what happens when I can’t take notes on my phone like a normal person. Yet another reason we should embrace modernity and cast aside the forest of yellow legal pads inhabiting my desk.

So that’s it for tonight. It’s the blog that almost was, but can’t be, because I was fool enough to write my ideas down on a dead tree byproduct instead of recording it as electrons… and because I forgot to throw my folder in my backpack on the way out. But I’m blaming antiquated record keeping methodologies rather than my own, perhaps flawed, end of the day closeout procedures.

The only good to come from this is that it means I may not have to have a single original thought for all of next week.

A certain smell…

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There’s a certain smell to summer in proximity to the Chesapeake. It’s not the saltwater smell you find at the beach. It’s not the aggressive punch of decomposing plant matter in the wetlands right down along the water’s edge. It’s a smell I only know from a few miles inland. It’s salty and woody and vaguely marshy. It’s a good smell and a familiar one for me. For a few weeks during the hottest parts of the summer I’d catch it in St. Mary’s County when I lived down at the southern tip of the western shore. It’s here now, too, at the northern reaches of the Eastern.

My first memory of that smell, and where I remember it most distinctly, is an a little town in between those two points no one reading this would have ever heard of. It’s the smell of long ago summer visits to far away relatives, of horses, of learning to pick crabs and to shuck oysters, and swimming until the pool’s rough bottom had worn blisters on my toes. It’s s a smell of a simpler time, or at least one that seemed simpler by virtue of knowing so little about the world’s machinations. It’s the single smell I’ll (apparently) forever associate with one very specific place and time.

It’s not a smell I’ve ever encountered elsewhere in my travels – there’s no hint of it in Petersburg, or Honolulu, or Memphis. Oregon has its own particular smell of the old, deep woods and powerful running water, but it’s not at all the same. I picked up that fleeting scent a few nights ago. It’s that time of year. The instant recall and deeply fond memories of times and people long gone couldn’t possibly have been stronger. I don’t think I’ll ever stop being amazed at what small details the brain snatches for its own and hides away only to restore them with perfect clarity years and decades later.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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Because I keep track of such things, I can tell you that this is the 150th weekly edition of What Annoys Jeff this Week. I have no idea whether I should be proud of that fact or horrified by it. Regardless, I’d have felt terrible in letting it pass without noting this small monument to one man’s ability to bitch and complain constantly and at length over long periods of time. As much as I’d like to just let this be a self-congratulatory post that feels like it would be something of a cop out… With that foremost in my mind, here are the three things that top my list of annoyances this week:

1. Forgetting. My memory has never been all that strong. Names? Forget it. I’ll forget a new person’s name before they’ve even left the room. There’s just something off with that part of my brain. I’ve learned to work around it without it usually being obvious. Forgetting the plastic pass that lets me into the building in the morning is something more problematic. That’s happened twice now in the last three weeks – both times because my pass was just a little off where where it normally sits. Apparently deviating from the morning routine even by as little as six inches one way or another is enough to mean I’ll end up driving 40 minutes to work, going home, and then trying the morning commute for the second time. If it happens again, I’m just going to staple the damned thing to my forehead and be done with it.

2. Realizing your own (lack of) importance. Most people don’t know this about me, but I have a long history of tilting at windmills. I’ve made staking myself to lost causes almost my life’s work. You could almost call me a patron of futility. It’s probably some kind of deep character flaw, but it’s been my mode of operation for so long that I’m not sure I’d know how to proceed any other way. Because of my windmill tilting tendencies I get to enjoy that awkward moment when you’re forced to admit that you’re nowhere nearly as important to someone as they’ve been to you. It’s a roundhouse kick to the ol’ ego. Fortunately I’ve got that in spades, although that still doesn’t make an distasteful truth any more palatable.

3. Missing deadlines. For the first time possibly ever, I’m facing a major project that in all likelihood I won’t be able to bring in on time. That’s made all the more problematic because there’s no option but to bring it in on time. There’s no rain date and the thing is going to happen no matter how many bits and pieces I’m still holding when the time comes. It’s infuriating because there was plenty of time to get everything in formation – right up until the point we (collectively) started getting sloppy and letting sloppy be ok. My inner perfectionist is aghast at the possibility.

That one guy from the meeting who had a beard…

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I have a confession to make. If I’ve only met you once or twice, I’m never ever going to remember your name. If I only see you once a month, I’m not going to remember your name. If we pass in the hallway every day and I recognize you by sight but we don’t have any substantive interaction, I’m never going to remember your name.

Some people have a knack for matching names and faces – even for people they see once and then maybe never again. Honest to God, I can sit in a meeting with you. Have an entire discussion and use your name the whole time, but five minutes later I’ll end up referring to you as “that one guy from the meeting who had a beard.” I know that for a fact because it’s exactly the phrase that came out of my mouth this morning in reference to a meeting I was in yesterday.

So, I’m not good with names. I make up for it with wit, charm, and by never talking myself into a position where I’d need to use a person’s name. Studying your own handout while asking “What do you think,” is a good way to avoid the awkwardness, in case you’re interested. Just avoid eye contact so it’s never entirely clear who you’re addressing and most of the time you’ll be good to go. And sign in sheets. Sign in sheets are your friend. They’re like having a cheat sheet only it’s perfectly legitimate.

All I’m saying to the people who I’ve met already and for those I’ll inevitably be forced to meet in the future, is don’t take it personally when I can’t call you by name in a meeting, after a meeting, or really at any time. Frankly I can’t call anyone by name. Sometimes I draw a perfect blank on people I’ve worked with for almost half a decade, so it’s nothing personal. It’s not you, it’s me.

I’m sure there’s some kind of mental gymnastics I could do to power up that part of my memory that is supposed to store and recall names, but doing that would require far more effort than I’m really willing to invest in it. I’m happy enough continuing to use second and third-person pronouns to meet all my professional needs.

Just another day…

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As Pearl Harbor Day slid past more or less unnoticed by the vast bulk of the country last week, my mind set off wondering how long it would take for the anniversary of the great traumatic events of our lifetime to be considered “just another day” on the calendar. Pearl Harbor was one of, if not the defining event of our grandparent’s generation – the clarion call that freedom itself was imperiled across the globe. In their millions, that generation answered the call and rolled Japanese imperialism back across the Pacific and stomped out Nazi fascism in Europe. They did the impossible because the only other choice was to accept a world where the very idea of personal liberty was an endangered species.

Seventy-two years later, when we collectively remember Pearl Harbor, it’s as grainy newsreel footage or from three inch pictures in a textbook. We remember it as a singular event and not as part of a grand, sweeping epoch of history that saw democracy in the world fighting for its survival. Worse, we see those events as something so far removed from our daily lives that they might as well have been made up by Hollywood.

Like the attack on Pearl Harbor for our grandparents, for us the terrorist attack on New York and Washington are slowly slipping into history. Even now, students in our nation’s high schools are too young to have first hand memories of that clear morning in September. How long do you suppose it will be before that too is something confined to the pages of history and 20-second “filler” clips on the news channels?

We owe it to ourselves and to the future to be better stewards of our history. They should know as much as possible about the world they’re inheriting. We’re not doing anyone any favors when we play down or neglect the sacrifices of the past. If I can be so bold as to paraphrase one of the great heroes of my youth – We must always remember. We must always be proud. We must always be prepared, so we may always be free.

We’ve simply poured out too much blood and too much treasure for landmark dates to pass as just another day.

Burger…

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There are plenty of places that try very hard to raise the simple and delicious hamburger into something like a high art form. I’m sure there is a place for a gourmet burger piled high with expensive and exotic toppings, but for my money there’s nothing better than a basic cheeseburger loaded down with ketchup, mustard, and raw onion on a buttered and toasted bun. Take one look at me and you’ll know I’m not exactly one to go in for the latest trends in Asian fusion or French cuisine. Those meals are more like an appetizer than a main course. It all boils down to personal preference, but I’m going to lay the blame squarely on the greasy spoon dining of my youth – Scotty’s, Kelly’s, and Marshall’s were all places to go to find a burger that was unapologetic about what it was and that didn’t need to be heaped with extras to taste good.

The real, local hamburger experience is getting harder and harder to find – it’s almost impossible unless you’ve been in an area close to forever. Ask most people where to get the best burger in town and they’re as likely to direct you to Sonic as they are to some mom and pop diner outside of town on the back road. For most of us, those places don’t exist anywhere but in our memory any more… But fortunately, that doesn’t mean the purists among us are stuck with some kind of fancy pants, snob burger.

Enter Five Guys. In my travels a few weekends ago I was lucky enough to spy what appeared to be a Five Guys Burgers and Fries not far away from me in Delaware. As far as I can tell, putting in an order from them is the next best thing to sitting down for one more burger in the battered, stained, and broken booths at Scotty’s. The atmosphere doesn’t even come close, but if you close your eyes and bite, the flavor is right there… Now if I can just talk them into putting brown gravy on the fries.

You’ll have to excuse me, but I need to go change. It’s time to start thinking about crossing state lines in search of dinner.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Last minute discoveries. In an abundance of caution, I reviewed the major book retailers one more time last night and found, to my horror, that there is, in fact, a paperback on the market using my working title almost word for word. It’s not available as an ebook and I guess that’s why I missed it when I was doing my initial research, but there it is sitting on Amazon, priced at $64 and ranked at #3,184,365 in books. To say this sent me into a mild fit is possibly an understatement. So yeah, it’s back to the drawing board for a title.

2. Rent. I’m not a fan of renting. I’m less of a fan when the rent goes up. Sure, I know it’s been the same for two years, but with the real likelihood of needing to slash 20% out of my expenses for the next six months, even a minor increase is going to have an outsized impact. Like businesses everywhere, it means I’ve got to come up with a way to pass that cost on to my customers, because I’m certainly not going to take the hit from my own bottom line. I’m going to pass that rent increase right along to my own renters when their leases expire and thus the circle of pain continues for everyone.

3. Memory. I don’t know if it’s because I’m trying to keep up with a couple dozen things at once or if it’s early onset Alzheimer’s, but I don’t seem to be able to remember a damned thing lately. Writing it down helps, but only when I remember to write it all down in the same place rather than leaving a trail of random Post It notes in my wake. Either my brain needs to get itself in gear and start carrying the load or I need to come up with a better written system to keep it all straight, because right now I’m missing stuff and that makes me crazy.