Every year we seem to get a few warm days around this time. Spring is still several weeks away, but we are teased by mild temps and sunshine, only to have freezing temps the next day. These first warm days offer a gentle comfort but the air still has that distinct crispness of the lingering winter. That feeling is unmistakable. When I experience it I am transported vividly to a specific time in my life. Autumn is my favorite season, but my favorite time of year will always be those first mild days when we got out on the course to start the high school golf season. I look back on those spring days with such fondness. In me is created this instant personal nostalgia that I want to be able to grab onto, but can never quite reach.
I could, and sometime will, write an entire entry on why I love golf so much. The sport played a big role in the most important of my formative years. However, this entry is about something different. This entry is about my inability to enjoy things as they happen. This is about the frustration of being unable to live in the moment no matter how hard I try. I guess the irony of that is "living in the moment", almost by definition, means not making an effort. You live in the moment when you just let things be.
These beautifully mild days are the perfect setting in which to enjoy the time with my wonderful wife and amazing baby girl. Even though I very much enjoy it, I know when I look back on it years later it will seem so much better. It is almost as if a moment cannot be savored until it has past and we get to hold on to that memory. Our small family is young and healthy. Life seems to be treating us extremely well. My little girl is perfect, yet I find myself mentally reminiscing about high school golf season, and how stress-free life was before entering the cubical-plagued corporate machine that is my career. Oh how I wish it could be like high school and I could cut out of work at 3pm and go to the golf course every day of the week. However at time nothing seemed to be that great about it. Am I cursed to be able to enjoy the full wonderment of an experience only long after it has passed?
Another example.... I moved down here and lived on my own a full year before I got married and my wife came down. I was entering the working world for the very first time and living in a brand new place where I knew no one. It was a tough year for me. I would get so down. I was on my own so much that I felt like I was living inside my own head. I am naturally introverted and very capable of keeping myself entertained. I clearly don't value human interaction as much as most people do. Even still, that year of quasi-isolation was a struggle for me. However, now when I look back on it I have so many fond memories. I loved being in the apartment complex on the golf course. I had a lot of good times making new friends. At the time I felt as though I were being tortured. I rarely seemed to be in a "good" mood. However, now it seems I only have positive memories of that year. Maybe I have the ability to filter out the bad and accentuate the good, making everything seem way better than what it actually was. My nostalgic trips down memory lane will always be better than the initial experience ever could have been.
I find it unsettling that I still feel unable to effectively "live in the moment." Not too long ago I experienced the birth of my daughter. I remember months ago describing the moment I found out my wife was pregnant. Just like that moment, the entire duration of Amelia's birthday felt like an out-of-body experience. I was very aware of what was going on, but it didn't seem like it was happening to me. I was just a guy standing there witnessing the events, and every now and then I would tell my body how a new father should react in the given situation. I don't exactly know how to describe it, but it is not hard to imagine the perception others might have. I probably seem disconnected. My mind has stepped out of the moment, and is processing the events almost as a 3rd party analyzing the situation. Maybe this is how I am able to filter down my memories to only keep the good ones. Immediately I am able to decide what gets stored in the memory banks.
I honestly don't have any bad memories. The ones that I might consider "bad" are ones that were embarrassing. When I think about those moments I feel more regret in how I acted. I wished I would have done/said something different that would have kept me from hurting somebody's feelings, or making myself look stupid. Things that I considered bad at the time seem fine when I look back. As an adolescent one of the things I hated most was baling hay. Specifically I hated unloading wagons of hay. It was hard work, it took a long time, and it just all-around sucked. As I remember it now those times were great. I value the many hours I spent unloading hay with my brothers just as much as the times we went fishing, or water skiing. In either case they were probably cussing at me, and in my brain there is little difference. The retroactive enjoyment I receive by remembering seems to be totally disconnected from the amount of pleasure I was feeling at the time.
I feel like I should be pretty content I have a brain full of good memories I can look back on. In fact I wish I had been writing a blog my entire life that I could go back and read now. Just the idea of that seems amazing. I'm sure some day when I look back on these times and read these blog posts they will seem so wonderful. One day I will tell Amelia tales of when she was 6 weeks old and her mother and I were head-over-heels in love with every ounce of her chubby frame. I haven't even *really* talked to her yet, but I can tell I'm gonna like her. I'm going to continue to try and live in the moment as best as I can, and I am going to continue collecting these great memories that I can get all nostalgic about later on.
