be this sunset, one for keeping

Lately, I have been living in a world that is overflowing with lasts.  Some leap out at me, waving their arms, shouting my name so as to ensure my attention.  My last first day of school; my last homecoming floatbuilding competition; my last home football game and homecoming dance.  These lasts are bold; they are insurmountable; there is no mistaking their presence.

Others, they are not so ostentatious -- instead, they hide behind corners and inside closets like small children playing hide and seek, only noticeable if a whisper or murmur of impatience or discomfort manages to escape.  The last time I will go back-to-school shopping at Staples with my mother, a list of supplies for each class in hand; the last time I will dance and belt out the words to a silly Disney song as an astonishing float comes together in the background; the last time I will do a victory lap around the football field with my entire grade because we have won the competition; the last time I will sigh exasperatedly as my father takes his millionth picture of my pre-homecoming group.

While it is easy for me to be constantly aware of these grandiose lasts, it is the subtle, murmuring ones that strike the most beautiful, elaborate, unexpected chords inside of me.  For AP English, our teacher had us write a narrative that depicted a certain aspect of our community.  Because the assignment was due the week after our homecoming and floatbuilding week, many students used this as their topic.  For the most part, those who wrote about it captured how much the week meant to most of us in terms of hard work and class bonding, but I know of one person who wrote about how none of it would even matter in the long run; how with time we would forget about our victory and how floatbuilding would be reduced in our minds to nothing more than a fact.

Perhaps over time we will forget some details of our senior year and high school experience -- after all, that is what time is; it is getting further and further away from a moment and forgetting and losing its nuances and details and aspects.  But just because I have forgotten some of these subtleties does not make the experience unimportant.  It is absolutely not the general fact of floatbuilding that I will carry with me as a great experience; it is the singing and dancing and laughing and bonding and sheer enthusiasm and passion that the entire grade had in common for a week.

Perhaps I will not remember the specifics of these experiences, but that is exactly what makes them so much more fragile and valuable than the fact of the experience as a whole.  Even after I have forgotten the words to a silly Disney song, I will carry with me the experience of for once in my life not caring that my voice was loud and clumsy and still singing anyway.  I will carry with me the feeling of camaraderie that I had even with people that I did not know well.  I will carry with me the conversations that I had with people with whom I do not often get the chance to come in contact.  How could I forget this? I want to remember it all.

That is where I think this boy was wrong in his narrative about our community.  These nuances do matter, even more than the general ideas.  If we allow all of these lasts to fade into generalizations, we lose so many of the things that made the experiences beautiful and meaningful.



photo by rod apfelbeck

photo by rod apfelbeck