everythingicanremember

[everythingicanremember]

Christmas 2020

Contrary to likely many people's experience with Christmas at the height of the pandemic this was probably the best Christmas I had as an adult. It was simple, easy. No extra family just the ones I know and love the most. It was perfect, in my opinion. For once I felt like I *got* the holiday like I hadn't ever before. You don't really appreciate Christmas in the same way when you were a kid. We ate rich, drank just as rich and stayed up late watching Christmas movies and doing our ill-timed yearly tradition of decorating the tree the night before the fat man was supposed to wiggle down the chimney. I had what was almost objectively the best beer I'd ever drank and have drank in my life that night: Forest by New Trail Brewing Co. I don't know if they will ever bring it back but hot damn it drank like juice and got you drunker than sin. Woke up presents and monkey bread while watching A Christmas Story.

[everythingicanremember]

Autumn 2002

I didn't get to meet my grandparents much, besides one of my grandmothers, dad's side. That's why I'm so glad I can kind of remember this. I was young... 4, 5, 6-ish. I'm guessing on the exact time frame in the title but honesty is everything, right? It was some sort of big family event, I think it was a wedding, or a funeral, weird that those two things often bring family together, but I vaguely recall that spirits were high so I'm going to go out on a limb and say that it was a wedding, of who I don't remember. What I do remember was the afterparty, it was in some comedically late 90's Italian restaurant. The walls were lined in red velvet all of the booths had polished brass connecting pieces and those rivets that held the (maybe) dark-green faux leather down to the aging seating. All of the tables had table cloths down to the floor and the place was carpeted, a carpeted restaurant, you'd never see that today. There was a bar in the middle with all of those beautiful brass fixings, big bar stools I couldn't get into yet, all of the glasses dangling overhead of the two or three guys that were running the whole operation. The lighting was dim, thinking back it felt like it wasn't real, like a padded cell where you got spaghetti Bolognese instead of your crazy meds. We must've been there for hours and hours, and it was reserved for probably just our family, all of the kids were running around and hiding under the tables, the big long table cloths were perfect for kids. I must've had 4 Shirley Temples, I love maraschino cherries to this day and as a kid they were literally the cherry ontop, my sister hates them to this day, I eat all of hers. I don't know why I remember this so much, maybe it just felt uncanny, all of the dark hues, the lack of restaurant etiquette. I couldn't tell you, things stick around in your head you can't explain sometimes. I know my grandpa was there, mom's side. I never got to 'meet' him. I was barely making memories when he died, I don't think I can remember his funeral, I must've went, but I can't remember-- I frickin' hope this wasn't his funeral and I am just confusing things in my head. I would be PISSED. I'm sad I never really got to meet most of my grandparents, as my parents get older I 'get it' now. I wasn't who I was in high school, shit I ain't who I was in college. I wish me, now, got to meet them, talk to them maybe even just once. They lived full lives, saw and did things that I don't get to experience aside from through them. I still had my one grandmother, and, I love her, don't get me wrong, but I don't *like* her. I don't want to go to lunch with her or catch up, lest I be put upon a stone and laid bare to be judged. I have a picture of little me and my grandpa. I see it every day and sometimes I forget to appreciate it.

[everythingicanremember]

Summer 2010's sometime

My family and I were travelling with our cousins or my pseudo cousin, I can't recall which, perhaps both. It was some where in the North East, we'd spent the day at a strangely empty amusement park that was either just unknown, unpopular, or unpopulated. Either way we had a blast, an amusement park filled with teenagers that weren't unhappy to turn on the rides for a couple of kids. It was nice. I got in trouble and my dad has a photo of me committing my crime, we were riding that ride that just spins you around in a circle, not the UFO shaped one but it had little seats for three or four butts. Since no one was there, and we all loved it, we went again, and again, and again, we finally went all in our own individual cars and I sat close to the center and held on for dear life as we asked whoever was running it to make it faster and faster, I'd started slipping out of my seat and my legs were hanging by centripetal force, it was a safety violation but after I fixed it they turned it back up.

[everythingicanremember]

Late August, 2001

First solid memory I think I have. Maybe brief flashes before this point but cannot confirm dates nor time periods. It was very sunny, the sun was getting low, the way it doesn't get nowadays, long shadows stretching all the way down the hill on my parent's property. I had just gone inside, it must've been late, the sun hangs for so long that time of year in Jersey. I wanted a piece of gum, I was learning how to chew it still. I swallowed it again, must've been the third-fourth time I'd done this because my mom yelled at me. It wasn't a mean yell but a frustrated one. We were laughing about it a while ago because the remembered how frustrated she was that I kept swallowing it after I promised her I wouldn't. I think I got the hang of gum chewing now.