Remembering

Today, I am fondly remembering.

I'm thinking about the trails that used to take me high above campus and above the vast valley when I was in college.  I'm thinking about the road that took me through canyons and farmland (which is kind of like over the river and through the woods) to my grandparents' home.  I'm thinking of the job that I once worked in a shoe store (my friends all laughed about it then, as I used to go to great lengths to avoid wearing shoes) and about the people who made it a wonderful time.

And, sitting on my bed, on the quilt that my mother-in-law lovingly stitched together as a wedding present for us, I'm remembering the home that was ours six months ago.  I'm remembering a morning when I smoothed this quilt over this bed and a strange thought popped into my head.  Someday, I realized, I'll look back on this time, and it will be a sweet, pleasant memory.

The thought seemed a little strange, because I was attempting to wade through my last semester of school online.  I was becoming very proficient at single-handedly (and I mean that literally) filling page after page with research and reports.  I was learning to care for a new baby, having started the semester when she was less than a month old.  Our house was warmed only in one room by an enormous, propane-powered space heater.  I had passed many an hour pecking away at one assignment or another, or nursing, with cold, cold, cold feet, willing that heater to roar to life (which really was an impressive sight) while temperatures outside dipped and dived below zero.

Yet when I stopped to think about it, it was not hard to imagine the whole semester as a happy memory.  And it is.  I would not do it over again, given the choice, but I love the hours I got to spend with our little Cricket, watching her wake up from naps, giving her baths in the kitchen sink, and having her fall asleep on my lap while I typed.  I still pine for the view from our kitchen window that I enjoyed while doing the dishes.  I even faintly miss the feeling of pulling together my research into a paper and compiling my APA-formatted bibliography at the end.

The view from our kitchen window.

Now, it's just as easy to see this chapter of my life, even with its uglier days, as a happy memory in the making.  I'm grateful for all of the things I have to look back on.  I'm grateful for pleasant and happy memories, not to live in, but certainly as a place from which to leap - especially on difficult days when I need a pick-me-up.  I think that we have memories for a reason and I believe that this is one of them.
So, sitting here, surrounded by the aftermath of our second (glorious!) snowfall on this little mesa, I'm watching blue and gray battle to color the sky, and personally, I'm rooting for gray this time.  I probably will forget this precise moment and even this morning, but I will not forget the period of time that is now being formed, the tapestry of which today is a thread.  And, the way I figure, I will never have to look back on my life and regret the way I lived it, so long as I can look back, and shamelessly and fondly remember.