Here comes a feeling you thought you'd forgotten

The spring and summer of 2010 (when we moved into our current house) happened with Vampire Weekend's Contra playing in the background. My kids were obsessed with it. For some reason none of us really got tired of it. Well, eventually we did but it was probably a year or more before I banished it from the car.

I turned on "Horchata" in the car the other day and the kids got super excited as we cruised down the road with the windows down and the stereo blasting. I love that they remembered how much they had loved that song. It seemed like 3 years couldn't possibly have already gone by. I think the summer of 2010 was my favorite summer ever. So far.



Last summer we stayed in Midway with Matt's family and as we drove around through those beautiful mountains we listened to We Are the Tide by Blind Pilot over and over. Any song from that album instantly brings back that fun week. Isn't it funny that I "look back" at it so fondly when it was less than a year ago?



Anything from White Ladder by David Gray brings back my freshman year at BYU. Can you believe my parents sent me so far away when I was only seventeen? Neither can I. A great year.



Ida's in a ballet class and the kids dance to "princess" type songs. Any Disney song from the '90s and I feel like I'm 9 years old sitting on my tiny bed in my tiny corner bedroom, scribbling the lyrics to "A Whole New World" on my steno pad.


They don't play this one in ballet class, but it was always my favorite! And I wrote the lyrics to that one in my steno pad, too.

I haven't been blogging much in 2013 and I think it's partly because I started a journal again this year. So freeing. Not that I can't be honest on my blog but it's different from scribbling down my thoughts in a hidden little book that's just for me. Whether it was a long time ago or a short time ago I love to think about happy moments from the past, and recording them keeps them vivid. Sad moments too, although I don't like to think about those ones I still record them.

Of course I can't write everything so while I'm experiencing things, especially with my kids, sometimes I sit and breathe it in almost like I'm recording it. Fortunately, I think I am pretty good at enjoying the moment, despite other failings. This reminds me of the last pages of Happier at Home by Gretchen Rubin, which I recently finished and enjoyed.

Elias Canetti wrote, "One lives in the naive notion that later there will be more room than in the entire past." (250) 

"As I walked up the steps to my building on that spring afternoon, and looked up at the windows of my little apartment in the big city, I reminded myself, "Now is now." And I know what the child Laura [Ingalls] did not yet know. Now is now, and now is already a long time ago. 

As I turned the key and pushed open the front door, as I crossed the threshold, I thought how breathtaking, how fleeting, how precious was my ordinary day. Now is now. Here is my treasure. (253)