Have you ever experienced a perfect moment in time?

It was a little too brisk outside this past weekend, so I grounded myself and decided to get to cleaning. A lot of it was junk, product boxes I’d saved, newspaper sections that I wanted just one recipe or article from, old candles that I thought I might melt down into new ones, a LOT of junk mail and just general trash. One of the things I unearthed was a pile of old greeting cards sent to me for housewarming, birthdays, christmas, etc. and it was interesting to go through them. A lot of the people who sent the cards are no longer friends or acquaintances, some are missed and others not so much. Those cards though, they were little frozen moments in time when there were nothing but good feelings between us.

• A card from my ex Christopher, it said “When we first met, I thought you were something special. — Now I know you are.” and he’d placed the contact card I gave him at the bar we first met telling me he didn’t need it anymore. Of course in another few months it turned out he wouldn’t need it at all anyway.
• A card from my former roommate about whom I say nearly nothing because no one needs that kind of crazy put out on the internet even if it is true. It was for my birthday and he wrote a very nice statement ending it with “You’re my best friend in the whole world.” This would be before he stopped speaking to me and spent all his time hanging around the apartment while unemployed in sweatpants drinking cheap vodka and watching tv until the Xena reruns stopped, then when employed he’d just come home, close his door and emerge to leave, get more booze or admit his bf and go back behind closed doors.
• A non-sappy (just my style) Valentines card from Matthew telling me how happy he was to have me in his life contrasted with him telling me “Well thanks for wasting my time!” before he slammed the phone down on me on the day I told him that I wasn’t happy with the way things were going.

There were other cards from people, some blips in my life, others good friends who, for whatever reason, I don’t see or talk to anymore. When I was reading through all of them, I remembered why I save them. It’s easy to say things you mean or don’t mean and those can be lost to memory or misinterpretation, but to have those sentiments written down… it was like my personal time machine. I could look back and remember the good times, remember why some things need to remain in the past, and most importantly be reminded of why I should keep looking ahead with hope and optimism. It was finding a card from Michael that prompted me to call him while I was going through the others. I read a few of them to him and we reflected on their context then and now and had a good laugh. It was unspoken, but understood that his cards don’t get thrown away. While others may haunt me come spring cleaning, there are the special piles of cards that I dust off, look through, laugh and smile and marvel at how far my connection with certain people has come since meeting them and how truly blessed I am to have them as a part of my life.

Flashback/WTF? — word of the day: abecedarian. I found it very hard to believe that this was a real word, but it instantly made me think of Big Bird’s song “ABC-DEF-GHI” and then very grateful that they never made a disco version of it.