About Moments and Their Weight

Last Friday night, I was driving back to my parents’ house in my green car. The heat was on, because whenever it’s cold outside I turn the car heaters on until I almost begin feeling sleepy from the warmth. Rain drops were covering the side windows, forcing my windshield wipers to sweep back and forth with that comforting, flip flap, rainy evening noise. It was dark outside- just lanes of white bulbs floating down the highway like strings of lights on December trees.  I had NPR tuned in and the BBC world report was on just loud enough to barely make out the faint sounds of the British newscasters’ voices. Then, I had one of those tingly-spine, teary-eyed moments of nostalgia. I’m not sure why, but all these little snap shots- times that weren’t significant enough to actually be events- kept sliding through my mind.

Like last Fall when I lived in England, I was on late bus back to the university from the city center. The streets outside were all dark and quiet and the bus was warm with the heat of dozens of people. All the seats were taken, passengers spilling out into the aisles, clinging to the overhead rails, packed together in a mass of scarves and boots and pea coats. The overhead lights on the bus were dimmed down low so that it almost felt like that peaceful moment when you are the last awake person in the house, so you step into the living room to switch off a single lamp that someone left on.

Everyone was headed home from school and work and shopping. The sounds of peoples’ voices were just the cozy murmurs of contented end-of-the-day conversations. There were some Germans standing next to me, quietly speaking in a mix of German and Polish. I don’t remember wanting to hold onto the moment for any special reason, but I think that it was a happy night for me.

Or like when I was much younger- like only five or six- when my mom and I were getting home late from running errands in town, she used to listen to this cheesy radio show on the way home. The host had this comforting, mellow voice and she would take time to listen to peoples’ stories about how they were missing their ex-boyfriend or how their dad had just been admitted into the hospital and they were quite scared about it. Then she would spout out a few words of comfort before dedicating a sappy 90’s pop song to their situation and telling them that everything would be okay eventually.

That show used to make me cry. I’ve always been kind of emotional- even then. So I’d lean forward and reach up from where I was sitting in the back seat and find my mom’s hand in the driver’s seat and just hold it, sometimes resting my face on our interlaced fingers while I watched rain drops have races down the sides of the windows.

Remembering these odd little moments- things that weren’t even important enough to be a tick on my life’s timeline- is unsettling in a way. Because when significant things happen to me, I’m able to acknowledge their presence and either grieve that they are happening or rejoice that I’m experiencing them. But blurry memories like these just tend to slip by without me getting a chance to think about what they are worth or how I will feel when I realize that they aren’t part of my life anymore. Kind of like how I can’t remember the last time I bought a pair of shoes that were one size bigger or the last time I slept in the same bed as my younger brother because one of us was scared of the dark.

 

Advertisement