Thursday, December 5, 2013

Wait... You expected this to be chronological?

As I sit here, trying to figure out what to type, story after story seems to swirl in my head attempting desperately to call enough attention to it's self that I will disregard all the rest and tell that specific story. Right. Now. Immediately at this very specific moment.  They so badly want to jump from my mind, to my thoughts, to the screen in front of me.  No longer held back by all that is politically correct, social acceptable and by the identity of the person who experienced them.  They want to run wild and free in the anonymity that is the internet.  To show the world what we all know, that when you lift up the curtain no family, no life, no any thing or anyone is prefect,  they are all shades of something else.  Experiences. 

The problem with this swirling mass of stories, beyond the amount of trouble the could get me in if certain people were to ever realize they were about them, is that they come in no specific order.  There are memories from childhood blended into an experience from 2 weeks ago, a month ago, last year.  They shift and move easily wrapping around one another  and bunching into a knot behind my eyes till they are all I can see.  The idea of untangling them and seeing each of them for what they are haunting my OCD mind.  But, what is the worse part of untangling a knot?  Trying to find one good end, one good place to start to let the rest of the pieces begin to fall away on their own. 

Let's see... I want to share a happy story first.  Something to make you and me smile.

I think I was 9 maybe 10.  On base in the Philippines.  We lived in the senior officers area of the base having moved there half way through our tour with my father's promotion to Lt. Commander.  But it was so much more fun then where we had come from.  Sure our old house had a could of stalks of sugar cane growing in the back yard but here.  Here was something totally different.. It was hillier and greener with more space between the houses.  There were more hills to roll down, and rocks to climb up.  My best friend lived up the hill.  And when I say hill I don't mean one of the nice gentle rolling bumps you see in prairie lands... I mean we lived on the side of a mountain.  And it was a heck of a mountain, at least to my 9 year old eyes. 

What I remember best about this specific day wasn't just getting together with my best friends to play in the little bit of jungle that sat on this side of the base fence,  it was the warmth of the sun on my skin.  It was hot.  Somewhere between 90 and 100 degrees out.  The sun seemed to shine brighter then I had ever seen it.  And I was happy.  It was summer, no gymnastic lessons, no school, no bullies no brothers.  Just me and my best friends.   And the side of the mountain.

To make it easier to get from my street to the streets above on foot, base personnel had taken one of the slopes and set in stairs.  Around the stairs; rocks which they had covered in tar.... or asphalt... something black and sort of sticky when it was just hot enough.  My friends and I never took the 60 stairs to get to the top of the slope.... Nope.  We always had to race up those silly rocks.  And I always lost that race. Every stinking time my two best friends would hit the top of the slope before me and start calling down for me to hurry up.   On that sunny day, they sill beat me up the rocks.  But for once I was close enough behind that they never got a chance to call down for me to hurry up.  I was right on their heels and up and running before they had time to turn around.  And they were chasing after me in to the cool shadows of our little jungle.

A mundane memory I admit.  But a good one.  And isn't that what a happy life is made up of?  Little mundane memories that make us smile, happy memories to make us grin, and glorious memories to make us laugh?  All of which get us through all of the worse moments of our life?