I have a theory that time
speeds up in relationship to a person’s age.
When I was a child it seemed like Christmas took forever to get here,
and now, as an adult, if I am not careful, I still have boxes of Christmas
things waiting to be put up and suddenly here it is again. Yes, there is the whole thing where out lives
are busier as adults, and how technology speeds things up even more. However I am not convinced that somewhere a
twisted Dumbledore is spinning a time turner with my name on it.
I was working on a blog entry
on Christmas books, and I had this memory I wanted to share from December
1985. I was a sophomore in HS and I had
flown to Tucson to spend Christmas with my Mom.
Jenni had hitched a ride with the youth group at First Christian to take
her to Santa Fe to spend Christmas with our Dad. In the middle of all the usual
Christmas stuff, my Mom was preparing for the Great Peace March. If you don’t remember, or perhaps weren’t
around in the 80’s it was a was a cross-country
event in 1986 aimed at raising awareness to the growing danger of nuclear
proliferation and to advocate for complete, verifiable elimination
of nuclear weapons from the earth. The GPM consisted of hundreds of
people, began in Los Angeles, CA in February 1986 to walk from L.A. to
Washington, D.C, The group left Los
Angeles on March 1, 1986 and arrived in Washington, D.C. on November 15, 1986,
a journey of about 3,700 miles, nine months, and many campsites.
Now I have stories for days about that
experience, both from my Mom’s perspective and my own, but that is not what I
am sharing today, In order to prepare
her for the insane amount of walking she was going to be doing we went on long
walks just about every day of my break.
I am not sure how we managed to find the time for this, because surely
she was working? Or maybe she was
substitute teaching that year and had winter break like I did? One afternoon we
walked down Prince, or maybe Grant, farther than we intended and then the
“shortcut” my Mom suggested, was hardly that, and we wound up sitting on the
grass at a park recuperating from a walk that had already been 5 miles and we
still had to head home.
So in our park time I showed my mom I could do
a back handspring. Then my Mom told the
me the store of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. “Video-o-o-o-o” and we laughed and hung out until we felt up
to finding our way home. Thing is, I can
remember what I was wearing, levi 501’s, the surf ghandi tshirt, a long sleeve
grey sweatshirt and a sleeveless bright blue sweatshirt with mickey mouse faces
on the front, grey saucony running shoes.
I can remember what my mom was wearing, long sleeve generic yellow jersey
with #88 on it, denim overalls, and brown hiking boots. For the life of me, I
can’t remember what we talked about, besides the mad max movie.
I miss my Mom, of course, and her sense of
humor, and mostly I miss having long conversations with her about clearly very
important topics.
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