Pitch Hitter: Thoughts From the Little Sis

I've had an unexpected week.  A week that I'm still processesing. Luckily my team of superheroes (because that's what my friends/family are- SUPER HEROES!) swooped in to save the day. One of whom is my little sister, Anne, who dropped everything to come stay with me and color my world happy. On top of that she's taking over my blog for this week's Bandit post!

So, without further ado, here is my lil' sister's musings about the things in life that she loves....

"Whence came and whither bound are we?

Holds something still of mystery;

But one grave thought is clear and plain,

We shall not pass this way again.”

~Eliza M. Hickok

I live my life in snapshots.


I love dress shirts on men, and the way their hands look at the end of crisp, white sleeves. I love singing so hard and so loud in the car that the old guy in the blue truck next to me can’t stop laughing at how seriously I’m taking my stop-light rocker-ballad. I love the smell of Mentholateum and the memories it stirs of my mother putting me to bed and rubbing my back---me sick with stuffy nose and achy joints. I love watching my older brother talk, act, sing, tell a story, gesture—a man born with the gift to command a room and deliver anything from a stand-up act to a sermon. I love staring at a full moon and feeling so completely small and like a child.


I love to observe in fine detail so as to greedily indulge myself with it later on. I love memories. I love capturing, extracting, emblazoning, branding, immortalizing the mundane, the sorrowful, the romantic, the entertaining, the bizarre, the uplifting. I do this both literally and figuratively. I write it, scrapbook it, take 38 pictures of it from six different angles. I bundle moments into bright bouquets of experience and hang them upside down in my memory to dry. I must preserve their zest, their color, for what are we, with out our memories? Who are we but a result of all things past?


Who are we, then, if we forget?

This passion to remember “days gone by” undoubtedly contributes to me constantly feeling like an anachronism. Translation: I wish I was born 100 years ago…even 80. I wish I grew up at a time when Hollywood was golden and women wore chiffon. I wish I lived on a farm and had milk delivered to me on my doorstep each morning in clinking, glass bottles. I wish I was that WWII nurse, panty hoes twisted, knees akimbo, caught in a “half-Nelson” half love lock with a celebrating sailor in the middle of Time Square.

(Anne in her past life.)

I wish I could go back.

I’ve never felt truly a part of the “here and now,” in this time that was designated for me. I don’t belong to the world of iphones, itunes, ieverything. I don’t like it. I don’t “get” it. Why is that?

Answer: I like to think it’s because I’m terribly nostalgic and a hopeless Romantic.

Real Answer: I don’t want to get it. I’m scared to death of what lies ahead.

I love the past because it’s sturdy and real. It's comfortable and worn, like my grandpa’s old flannel shirts. I love what the past made of my grandparents—what it made of most people who survived so much poverty and war: grateful, honorable, heroic. I love the past because the hapless chaos of the Sixties and Seventies made my parents ever so determined to give their children an ordered life complete with chore charts, timeouts, and time together. They gave us loyal love and purpose.

I love the past because it’s already been done. It’s already been battled out, prayed about, lost to, won back, gasped at, grieved about, sung through, laughed over. Lived. And they did it with grace.

I love it because I know how it ends.

For a girl who loves surprises, I’m strangely future-phobic. I don’t like the lack of control that comes from living so quickly, each day smearing into a week, then two months, then a year. All this made possible by anything and everything digital. We go so fast now! And I don’t love where we’re headed. I don’t love having 712 “friends” on Facebook and not knowing what’s going on in the lives of 682 because I never see them. I don’t love how dating and relationships have been reduced to 11pm texts that say, “S’up?” I don’t love the option of downloading a book and reading it on a glowing screen as opposed to holding the musty, dog-eared thing in my hands. I don’t love what robots we’re becoming.

If that’s what Future means, no wonder I dig my heels in and pull back against the tug of “progress.” Maybe I don’t want it. Maybe I don’t know how to handle it. Maybe I’m small-minded and afraid. I admit it. But is that really so terrible? Yes, I run to the Past and my pantry of waiting memories as often as needed. But I promise I don’t live there perpetually.

I promise I’ve managed to move forward and become a healthy, full-functioning adult in the 21st century. But I will always relish those moments when the power goes out and I’m suddenly thrust into the 19th century, candles lit (or flashlights…whatever) and faces of friends or strangers huddled together in the soft glow. I will always drink from the hose any chance I get because that gushing, metallic taste is my childhood, and my childhood was warm, and bright, sweaty, and breathless. I will always stare hard at the photograph of my grandpa Gordon as a young serviceman, trace his Kurt Douglas chin with my finger, and ache to know what it was like to be in his physical presence.

I will never stop loving those silver moments of history, whether my own or the world’s, that make me less afraid of my own future. So I might pick my kids up from school in a hover-craft someday. But if I do, I’ll be sure to tell them about my first car, a red, stick-shift Festiva the size of a can of yams. I’ll tell them how it feels to ride a bike without holding on to the handle bars, about running with my friends to the park. I’ll tell them about slowly walking to school and stooping to collect writhing worms from the previous night’s thunderstorm. I’ll tell them how it feels to stand still and absorb an Arizona sunset—how I always felt compelled to do it in silence out of total awe and respect. And then I might have to explain what silence means. So that evening, I’ll take them outside, tell them to watch, and remember...

************

"The Nanners" and Me

I know. I'm holding on tight to her coattails 'cuz I just know they'll get me into heaven!

PS. I haven't picked a topic for Miss Natalie next week.....any ideas?