If You Blink, You Might Miss it

If you ever find yourself driving north out of Tulsa on U.S. 75, the last Okie town you'll see before crossing the Kansas state line is a tiny little hamlet called Copan. Copan is one of those much-maligned small prairie towns quickly being bled dry by population shifts and the aging of its citizens. There's nothing there to speak of, except for a few hundred good ol' folks and a dam-created lake. In fact, you can barely see Copan from the highway. As the old idiomatic expression goes, if you blink, you might miss it.

Beautiful downtown Copan, OK.

Personally, tiny little Copan has a few important memories for me. My mother taught there for a few years and my brother lived a few of his formative early years there. Though I don't remember it, my parents brought infant Kyle home from the hospital on a snowy January day to a small trailer park on the outskirts of Copan.

I find myself thinking about Copan today, not only because it's my birthday, but also because it's a time deep in my past, hard to remember and pieced together from incomplete recollections or yellowing photographs. 35 years isn't that long of a stretch of time though, relatively speaking. Many of my friends and colleagues are older than that and a few small decades are practically insignificant in the context of human history. 

With all that mind, it's still true that I don't have any meaningful recollection of living in Copan. There's a few photos reminding me that it happened, but that's the only link I have to that time and place. It's irrevocably in the past, ungraspable and increasingly hard to see clearly. It's like that because that's what time does to all of our memories. What seems unforgettable and overwhelmingly vivid at the time becomes as distant and muted as the snapshots of my infancy have become.

My childhood, once so easy to recall and ponder, grows a bit more dim with each passing January. My teen years, soaked in awkward coming-of-age regret, are less and less important to my current identity. Even my memories of my daughters as toddlers seem somehow less vibrant, which is more than a little depressing. For some, such feelings might bring with them a sense of dread. After all, we're nothing but a slowly degrading body containing a set of lessons and experiences. If those experiences fade, aren't we losing parts of ourselves?

Perhaps. We might also lose the vibrancy of the past because there are fresh memories forming that are far more relevant to who we are now. Humans are always caught between cycles of decomposition and regeneration. Our bodies do it at the cellular level. It's only fitting that our minds dwell in the same narrow boundary zone.

Thinking about it doesn't make me sad, though. I feel lucky, actually. Lucky to have lived and experienced so much. I'm grateful that I remember the squeak of my bare skin against the long, oddly angled playground slide at the now-closed Will Rogers Elementary. I'm grateful that I vividly remember the unconstrained swell of pride I felt at winning the spelling bee in 5th grade. I remember the terrifying feeling of fist fighting one of my close friends in 9th grade over a girl because he told her to "drop the zero and get with the hero." 

I remember how badly my hands shook for hours and days after very nearly rolling my truck over a concrete guard rail on the I-40 crosstown bridge in 1998. Just one more half roll and I'd have fallen over a hundred feet to my inevitable death. I am grateful to remember the sinking feeling, ten years later, watching my best friend drive his truck away from a Marie Callender's in Norman, knowing that I might not ever see him again.

There are so many other more important moments that are seared onto my mind and so many other less relevant memories fading away into nothing. I'm grateful for every one of them, whether it stings to recall them or not. The memories I'm allowed to hold onto constitute an ever-evolving, ever-transforming identity and it's the only one I've got.

Each one that passes makes room for a new one to take it's place. One day, hopefully far in the future, there won't be any new memories being made. My mind will stop and so will my body. Everyone that knows me, has ever spoken to me, hugged me, or kissed me will also stop being. Those memories made will all eventually fade into nothing. This is natural and beautiful and there is never a reason to fear our collective, common fate.

This year, my birthday wish is to enjoy the memories I can make and not fear losing some of them to inevitability. I want to savor them while I can and allow them to come and go naturally. I want to enjoy the tiny parade of small, miraculous memories as they pass by and begin to yellow with age, however imperceptibly. I want to keep my eyes open as often as I can and allow them to take in as much light as they possibly can so that I miss very little that goes by.

Being grateful to be alive another year is a wonderful feeling and it passes far too quickly. It's just like that small town off U.S. 75. If you blink, you might miss it. Have a great week out there and be good to each other.