Pockets full of sunshine

When the moments pass too quickly and the feelings have no name, how do you capture the memories?

When my son was a little boy he loved to put things in his pockets. The smaller the better.

Sometimes he would share his treasures. Sometimes he would reveal them with a soft voice and a trusting lean, his big brown eyes widening as he opened his chubby hand to reveal something deep inside his palm.

But most of the time, the treasure had long been his secret, tucked away to run his tiny fingers over so this talisman could speak to him, soothe him or ground him.

Tiny stones, good luck charms purchased with his allowance at the neighborhood store, a mini knock-off Gumby doll from the dentist office gum ball machine that we nicknamed “Stretchy Betchy,” a half-inch mini Lego head inside a mini Lego suitcase that he carried daily for about six months (that one had us a bit concerned).

And then there was that one time he nabbed a red bead from a Montessori school work piece and the teacher was convinced he put it up his nose for safe keeping. Poor Miss Bridget called us frantically. It was in his pocket the whole time.

Women’s clothes are notoriously absent of pockets, but I’ve taken to adorning myself with talismans and memories instead. In the mornings when I dress for the day, I layer on my treasures I think about what powers I need to summon. I slip on my mother’s wedding ring, an ornate, chunky lace band in gold that seems to tell me I’m being held by a fiercely super powered safety net, because that was and always will be my mom’s brand. I summon my grandmother’s give-no-fucks attitude when I wear my her stone, a chameleon-like alexandrite gem as multi-faceted as my grandma (almost). I carry them with me. I silently talk to them as I get dressed, “wait till you see where we are going today,” because in their wildest ceiling-crushing dreams they would not have envisioned this blessed life of mine.

My dad carried his papa’s tie in his briefcase to and from work as long as I can remember. Even when his work didn’t require a briefcase per se, that bag went with him everywhere, every day, with all its special things inside: the tie, favorite photos, sentimental letters. In a journey that had proved unpredictable and rocky— as most journeys are — my dad carried his own life preserver in that case. It was a portable time capsule of unconditional love.

Since I was a little girl, I loved to collect small pieces of memories. I still have the first necklace a boy ever gave me – a brass Mickey Mouse charm from a kid named Danny who passed it to me on the field of our elementary school in fourth grade when he asked me out. I have the letters my best friend Darcy and I exchanged throughout elementary school when she moved across the country. I have the first journal I ever kept that divulged serious secrets like “Look at this highlighter I got today. Three colors in one!” written in the tri-tip marker with swirls across the page.

These days though, I find myself wanting to document my life like it were a movie, and hermetically seal it in a jar, forever preserved and viewable through the glass. I find myself wishing I could catch the little feelings hanging in the air to try on whenever I’m in need – elation, pride, even angst. There’s an emotion I feel often these days for which I’m not even sure there’s a name. It feels like joy in my heart, and pride in my mind, but in my gut, where all the truth lives, it feels like a twisting anxious stir. That is the feeling of living on the cliff of saying goodbye to a child, of loosening the vice grip of the first 18 years and slowly letting your arms out wide to release her into the universe, then holding those arms in place so you're ready to catch her again when she needs you. That feeling has no name that I know of. (But if you do, please, please share.) And though it may sound like pain, I know even now that it is, in fact, wonder. Wonderful wonder. It is something to hold and treasure for this moment too will pass, and it is the surest proof point I’ve lived yet that the journey is a hell of a lot more interesting than the finish line.

And so I live these past months in a constant reach for the phone. I don’t want to miss a moment – a photo, a video, a note taken because time is moving too fast.

So fast that I feel I can’t even stop to grab the tiny souvenir to put in my pocket, because as soon as I attempt to grab it, it is gone and another moment blindsides me. Emotionally, this life stage is a marathon. If I were to scoop up all the little ingredients of ephemeral moments, heart swells, butterflies within my belly… all the layers upon layers of complexity overwhelming me as my family begins this next chapter, there would not be a steamer trunk big enough to carry it with me along my way.

—

At dinner tonight, I asked my son if he had the notorious Lego head in the Lego suitcase in his memory box.

“No, I look at my memory box every few months and it’s not there,” he said. “It got lost in life’s grains of sand.”

I picture myself in the not-too-distant future, when the kids have left home, settled into their lives, my days no longer cluttered from juggling 15-minute billing increments and endless video calls with orthodontist appointments and school supply shopping. I sit cross-legged on a beach looking out at the glistening water, the waves slowly pulsing in and out from the shore. I pick up a handful of sand, and as the grains slip over and between my fingers I let the memories that I never managed to put in that jar wash over my heart.