Kim Wilbanks

I was at a high school football game a few weeks ago and I saw my son.  Well, sort of.  There was a group of elementary school aged boys running around together and I could have sworn my son was in the group.  He is in his twenties so clearly, it was not him but the sight of those boys brought back the memory of my own young son running around with his pals at the school’s soccer games many years earlier.  I have to admit, tears stung my eyes.

Memories are funny like that, aren’t they?  The smallest, most insignificant thing can send our mind back years and sometimes those memories are so real they are almost palpable.  Sometimes it seems if you just closed your eyes tight enough or focused hard enough, you could be right back in the reality of that memory.

My daughter learned how to drive in a purple PT Cruiser.  Each day, when I picked her up from school, I would let her drive us home or to wherever else we needed to go.  She created a CD of 10 or 12 her favorite songs that we listened to every day.  I will occasionally  hear one of those songs in the grocery store and my mind goes back to bopping around in that little PT Cruiser.

As a baby, my daughter had the habit of rubbing her nose against my shoulder when she was tired.  A few nights before her wedding last year, as I lay in bed thinking about how fast time had flown by, I could almost feel that same sensation.  Ahhh, to be able to hold that baby again. 

Wouldn’t that be amazing?  Do you ever wish you could re-live a memory?  Oh, I don’t mean a complete do-over, although there certainly are things in my life I would do differently.  If I could re-live a memory, I would sit on the floor with my little boy and hear him say “younme mommy” or take my little girl to story time at the bookstore one more time.  I guess that is the best part about memories, good ones anyway.  You can re-live those special times again and again.