This is what I want to remember
I've had a Live Journal for almost ten years. That is a lot of memories. It is also a whole lot of crap, because a lot of what I posted really wasn't worth remembering.
The last few weeks, I've really started thinking about what a journal actually is and why people keep them, and somewhere along the way I remembered that you write a journal because that it what you want to do - remember. Whether you plunk it out online or you actually scrawl the words across a physical page in a book, keeping a journal is all about writing down what you don't want to forget.
Human memory is faulty, slippery, and quick to escape if you don't have some way hold on to it and keep it close. This has become even more glaringly obvious to me and my family as we watch my grandmother slip away, one memory at a time. She still knows who we are, she can still put names to the familiar faces, and that is a true blessing. But her short term memory is almost non-existent, and the words that once came to her so easily when she told a story or rejoiced in an old memory often slip out of her grip. Without some way to capture them - and the memories that go along with them - there is a very good chance that those stories will be lost for good. And in 50 years, what is to say the same won't happen to me?
So, I'm being proactive and trying to capture mine before they get away. This is what I want to remember.
In the early days of my grade school years - maybe between age 6-11 or there abouts - my best friend was Lance Schilling, the boy who lived the next house up from ours. He was a year younger than I was, and we lived in the country, so there was a corn field between our homes, but that didn't stop us from spending many, many happy summers and winters playing all the simple, innocent games that children are so entertained by and having all those imagination-inspired adventures.
Summertime was all about building forts. There were two I recall - one in the wind break behind my house, complete with well-beaten path where any encroaching vegetation was brutally smacked away with our "whipping sticks", and a nice climbing tree at the end. He also had one behind his house, a secret fortress amongst the protective overhanging branches in his back yard. I think his even had one or two old car seats that we could sit in, as well as an old broken television that we used to send and receive secret video messages.
When the novelty of the tree forts wore off a bit, and inspired by the various deer beds we had found amongst the prairie grasses behind our house, next up were grassy forts where we basically just stomped trails and "rooms" into the long grassy Timothy Weeds that were all over the place starting late spring and going all the way into the autumn. These things easily grow 5 or 6 feet tall, leaving *plenty* of shelter - at least from the sides - for two (and occasionally three if my brother Ben joined us) 4'5" grade school children. Looking back now, I *cringe* when I think about how many bugs and wood/deer ticks we must have picked up as we tromped through the tall grasses in shorts and t-shirts, but when you're a kid, silly things like blood-sucking bugs and creepy crawlies getting squished onto your bare skin and clothes just don't bother you.
And the mud. Oh, man, did we love playing in the mud. A favorite haunt for pretty much every kid who lived within a quarter mile of it was the small creek right next to where my grandparents lived. I doubt I could ever possibly count the number of hours we all spent down there playing on the edge of the water (it was tiny - maybe a foot and a half deep, tops, and about 10 feet across. Basically, a glorified mud puddle, so nothing to swim in - but there was plenty of mud to go around), chasing bull frogs, looking for pretty rocks, and tracking leaf boats and sticks "downstream" - dropping them in on one side of the road, and seeing which ones made it all the way through the culvert under the road to come out the other side. We were also big fans of the bubbling brooks raging rivers flowing down the hill in the ditches to either side of the road during the late winter/early spring, subsituting ice boats for the leaf boats we used in the summer time, and trying to make snow and ice dams to slow the torrents.
In the winter, it was sledding and building snow forts and snowmen in our yards. On one memorable occasion, we also went runner sledding down the road, which was pretty much glare ice all winter long. It was a tradition my family had been doing for years - my dad grew up in the same house as we did, and as it is right on top of a hill, weeeell... kids will come up with the darndest things to amuse themselves. ;) - and one brisk winter day, we called and invited Lance to come over and go sledding with us as well. I remember his father specifically telling me on the phone "Yeah, he can go sledding with you as long as you guys stay off the road." Of *course* I promised we would with all the honesty and innocence an eight year old can muster, and 10 minutes later Lance came walking across the field with his snow saucer on a string behind him.
At first we stuck to the promise, sledding out in the field and down the big snow pile the plow had left in our yard, but as with any eight-to-twelve year old, the Need for Speed soon overcame the promise to avoid the road, so my brothers and I retired the plastic sleds and saucers and brought out the Big Guns - two well-loved runner sleds, the same one my dad played on when he was a kid (lovingly aged to steering perfection, but also pretty well maintained, so no risk of falling apart as we blasted head-first down the hill at 20 mph), and the one my brother Gus had gotten for Christmas a few years before.
This was, of course, the same afternoon Lance's father decided to take the scenic route to work (or wherever), and drove past us as we were walking back up the hill. Busted! My brothers and I got a glare - Lance might've gotten more later that night when he got back home, but he never told me about it if he did - but otherwise we were left to our own devices. At least one of my parents was there keeping an eye on us, so perhaps that is what won him over in the end. It was also the same sledding adventure where Niner - just barely a year old, maybe two at most, and still very much in her Hyper Black Lab phase - stole Lance's hat right off his head, and we spent at least twenty minutes laughing and chasing after her up and down the road trying to retrieve it.
Lance had a Nintendo, too, which was the coolest thing ever when your eight years old and had never been able to play video games outside of the arcade at the roller skating rink. I lost track of how many hours we spent playing Mario Brothers and Super Mario Brothers and Pole Position, among others I'm sure.
We also built obstacle courses in our yards, and we would time each other on how long it took to get through them. The big maple tree in my front yard turned into a space ship, and the three of us (my brother Ben often joined us, even if we were "too little" as far as he was concerned) would go off exploring strange alien planets and getting chased by the natives, with sticks and broken branches that became the swords and guns we fought them off with. Even the rain wouldn't stop us - if the weather outside wasn't behaving, it wasn't hard to bring our adventures indoors and spend a few hours playing board games (always, always Key to the Kingdom. Occasionally Monopoly or card games) or watching some movie on the VCR.
His parents baked us cookies; my parents offered him dinner after a hard afternoon playing outside. I had his phone number memorized, and had many a conversation with his mother or his father starting with the words "Can Lance come over and play?" - and it was probably the same on his end, too. We weren't inseparable, but we were close, and some of the best times of my childhood were had when he was around.
We grew up, and we grew apart - nothing bad, mind, just the natural shift of interests, as well as the ever-present "Ew, boys!/Ew, girls!" phase we all go through at some point when we didn't want to get coodies. The year between us also became a bit of a barrier as I went off to junior high in Marshfield, and he was still at the local country grade school. Somewhere around 6th grade (5th for him) we stopped calling each other, stopped getting together to play, and it wasn't long after that we only ever saw each other in passing. Then even that disappeared as we both went our separate ways, and I think it's been at least eight years since the last time I even saw him.
Still, though... we had a good run. And as my partner in crime for many of the things I got in trouble for as a child, I still got a bit of a soft space in my heart for those memories.
The last few weeks, I've really started thinking about what a journal actually is and why people keep them, and somewhere along the way I remembered that you write a journal because that it what you want to do - remember. Whether you plunk it out online or you actually scrawl the words across a physical page in a book, keeping a journal is all about writing down what you don't want to forget.
Human memory is faulty, slippery, and quick to escape if you don't have some way hold on to it and keep it close. This has become even more glaringly obvious to me and my family as we watch my grandmother slip away, one memory at a time. She still knows who we are, she can still put names to the familiar faces, and that is a true blessing. But her short term memory is almost non-existent, and the words that once came to her so easily when she told a story or rejoiced in an old memory often slip out of her grip. Without some way to capture them - and the memories that go along with them - there is a very good chance that those stories will be lost for good. And in 50 years, what is to say the same won't happen to me?
So, I'm being proactive and trying to capture mine before they get away. This is what I want to remember.
In the early days of my grade school years - maybe between age 6-11 or there abouts - my best friend was Lance Schilling, the boy who lived the next house up from ours. He was a year younger than I was, and we lived in the country, so there was a corn field between our homes, but that didn't stop us from spending many, many happy summers and winters playing all the simple, innocent games that children are so entertained by and having all those imagination-inspired adventures.
Summertime was all about building forts. There were two I recall - one in the wind break behind my house, complete with well-beaten path where any encroaching vegetation was brutally smacked away with our "whipping sticks", and a nice climbing tree at the end. He also had one behind his house, a secret fortress amongst the protective overhanging branches in his back yard. I think his even had one or two old car seats that we could sit in, as well as an old broken television that we used to send and receive secret video messages.
When the novelty of the tree forts wore off a bit, and inspired by the various deer beds we had found amongst the prairie grasses behind our house, next up were grassy forts where we basically just stomped trails and "rooms" into the long grassy Timothy Weeds that were all over the place starting late spring and going all the way into the autumn. These things easily grow 5 or 6 feet tall, leaving *plenty* of shelter - at least from the sides - for two (and occasionally three if my brother Ben joined us) 4'5" grade school children. Looking back now, I *cringe* when I think about how many bugs and wood/deer ticks we must have picked up as we tromped through the tall grasses in shorts and t-shirts, but when you're a kid, silly things like blood-sucking bugs and creepy crawlies getting squished onto your bare skin and clothes just don't bother you.
And the mud. Oh, man, did we love playing in the mud. A favorite haunt for pretty much every kid who lived within a quarter mile of it was the small creek right next to where my grandparents lived. I doubt I could ever possibly count the number of hours we all spent down there playing on the edge of the water (it was tiny - maybe a foot and a half deep, tops, and about 10 feet across. Basically, a glorified mud puddle, so nothing to swim in - but there was plenty of mud to go around), chasing bull frogs, looking for pretty rocks, and tracking leaf boats and sticks "downstream" - dropping them in on one side of the road, and seeing which ones made it all the way through the culvert under the road to come out the other side. We were also big fans of the bubbling brooks raging rivers flowing down the hill in the ditches to either side of the road during the late winter/early spring, subsituting ice boats for the leaf boats we used in the summer time, and trying to make snow and ice dams to slow the torrents.
In the winter, it was sledding and building snow forts and snowmen in our yards. On one memorable occasion, we also went runner sledding down the road, which was pretty much glare ice all winter long. It was a tradition my family had been doing for years - my dad grew up in the same house as we did, and as it is right on top of a hill, weeeell... kids will come up with the darndest things to amuse themselves. ;) - and one brisk winter day, we called and invited Lance to come over and go sledding with us as well. I remember his father specifically telling me on the phone "Yeah, he can go sledding with you as long as you guys stay off the road." Of *course* I promised we would with all the honesty and innocence an eight year old can muster, and 10 minutes later Lance came walking across the field with his snow saucer on a string behind him.
At first we stuck to the promise, sledding out in the field and down the big snow pile the plow had left in our yard, but as with any eight-to-twelve year old, the Need for Speed soon overcame the promise to avoid the road, so my brothers and I retired the plastic sleds and saucers and brought out the Big Guns - two well-loved runner sleds, the same one my dad played on when he was a kid (lovingly aged to steering perfection, but also pretty well maintained, so no risk of falling apart as we blasted head-first down the hill at 20 mph), and the one my brother Gus had gotten for Christmas a few years before.
This was, of course, the same afternoon Lance's father decided to take the scenic route to work (or wherever), and drove past us as we were walking back up the hill. Busted! My brothers and I got a glare - Lance might've gotten more later that night when he got back home, but he never told me about it if he did - but otherwise we were left to our own devices. At least one of my parents was there keeping an eye on us, so perhaps that is what won him over in the end. It was also the same sledding adventure where Niner - just barely a year old, maybe two at most, and still very much in her Hyper Black Lab phase - stole Lance's hat right off his head, and we spent at least twenty minutes laughing and chasing after her up and down the road trying to retrieve it.
Lance had a Nintendo, too, which was the coolest thing ever when your eight years old and had never been able to play video games outside of the arcade at the roller skating rink. I lost track of how many hours we spent playing Mario Brothers and Super Mario Brothers and Pole Position, among others I'm sure.
We also built obstacle courses in our yards, and we would time each other on how long it took to get through them. The big maple tree in my front yard turned into a space ship, and the three of us (my brother Ben often joined us, even if we were "too little" as far as he was concerned) would go off exploring strange alien planets and getting chased by the natives, with sticks and broken branches that became the swords and guns we fought them off with. Even the rain wouldn't stop us - if the weather outside wasn't behaving, it wasn't hard to bring our adventures indoors and spend a few hours playing board games (always, always Key to the Kingdom. Occasionally Monopoly or card games) or watching some movie on the VCR.
His parents baked us cookies; my parents offered him dinner after a hard afternoon playing outside. I had his phone number memorized, and had many a conversation with his mother or his father starting with the words "Can Lance come over and play?" - and it was probably the same on his end, too. We weren't inseparable, but we were close, and some of the best times of my childhood were had when he was around.
We grew up, and we grew apart - nothing bad, mind, just the natural shift of interests, as well as the ever-present "Ew, boys!/Ew, girls!" phase we all go through at some point when we didn't want to get coodies. The year between us also became a bit of a barrier as I went off to junior high in Marshfield, and he was still at the local country grade school. Somewhere around 6th grade (5th for him) we stopped calling each other, stopped getting together to play, and it wasn't long after that we only ever saw each other in passing. Then even that disappeared as we both went our separate ways, and I think it's been at least eight years since the last time I even saw him.
Still, though... we had a good run. And as my partner in crime for many of the things I got in trouble for as a child, I still got a bit of a soft space in my heart for those memories.