OMG OMG OMG – I got tagged for my first meme!!!  Alert the media, right now!  I’ve never been tagged before!  (Blush) since this is my first time, I’m really nervous, don’t laugh at my awkwardness… please.  Still blushing over here, and I’m all verklempt, I’m telling you!  Oy! 

Okay, now that all that’s over with, Tish over at The Kat House tagged me with Three Things I can’t let go.  Only three?  In my case that needs to be at least 3000.  Because if there were only 3 then my frequent moves over the years wouldn’t have involved ever-increasing  truck sizes and one whole container of my treasures would not still be living with the friendly folks over at Gouffon Moving & Storage.  I have lots of baggage, obviously, but it goes with all my issues (and subscriptions), and all that makes me who I am!  I wouldn’t need this blog if all that weren’t a part of me.  So my excess is your gain, dear readers, aren’t you lucky?  Yeah, very lucky, because some guy named Chip picked only three- one Physical, one Mental, and one Emotional thing you can’t let go of.  Yeah, this should be easy, and in my part-time job I’m a Chinese Test Pilot, that’s easy too.  Well, enough kvetching, here’s my list:

• Physical:  As stated above, I have way too much stuff.  I am hauling around at least two or three lifetimes of stuff, which is tied to memories of life that’s gone past.  It’s kind of funny, because I actually had to answer this question in a literal sense back in 1999, when EB and I were forced to evacuate our home due to Hurricane Floyd.  In our flight we only took two things with us – our pictures and our computer (for the photographs on the hard drive).  That decision has not changed.  Everything else in my home could be replaced – even God forbid my jewelry, my Burberry scarves and my Coach collection- but that box of pictures, and my External Backup Drive represent my life.  Everything is there, the whole visual record.  So, my physical thing that I can’t let go of is my photographs.  Everything else falls into the category of things, albeit things with lots of meaning, but photographs, to me, are proof that I am part of a historical record, proof of a life well-lived.
• Mental – My intelligence.  Now, trust me when I tell you that I am no Mensa member.  I can’t remember the Pythagorean theorem, or any square roots, of anything except maybe the dogwoods in my yard.  So kids, when they tell you that you’ll be using that crap in real life – yep, they’re lying!  It’s a trick.  But learn it anyway, because you just never know.  Anyway, I am intelligent, and with that intelligence comes curiosity and the ability to question everything.  My mom would tell everyone that I was her “Why?” child, and I know she’s reading this, so feel free to comment Mom, you’re allowed.  Even as a child and especially today the answer “because” just doesn’t work with me.  Oh no!  I have always needed to know “why” and I never have accepted any BS in the answer either.  That intelligence gives me the ability to look around my world and demand more than “because” as an answer for the many things that are wrong or stupid that are happening around me every day.  It also gives me the ability to be relatively unstoppable, because my intelligence has bred an incredible independence – of mind and ability.  So, if you took that away from me, please take my memory, because I would be destroyed.  I guess then that Alzheimer’s would be my kryptonite, the one thing I am terrified of the most.  Well, that and bugs and oversized objects, but that’s another category entirely. 
• Emotional – This one is hard.  Very hard.  I’ve had a few milestone emotional things in my life - too many for my young age, I’d say.  But the most defining moment emotionally for me is giving up my son for adoption in 1988.  I wrote about this event some time back, so I won’t go into the whole thing here, but suffice to say that this event has left marks on me that will never be removed.  That is not to say that I regret the decision I made, oh no.  I never have and I never will.  But, that decision is one that I never forget.  No day goes by that I remember in some way that I too am somebody’s mother.  Not in deed, but in creation.  I only regret that I could not have been better prepared emotionally, more mature mentally, and financially more stable and been able to not make that decision.  But, as I am wont to say, it is what it is, and I did the best for Ryan that I could.  Since I wasn’t any of those things, I picked out people who are, and I gave him the best life I could, even if that life didn’t include me.  But I’ve never forgotten anything about that time, and that time shaped the person I am today, in ways that are unseen but definitely felt daily.

 There, that’s cathartic on a Saturday morning!  Thanks Kat for making me one of the cool kids!  My first meme!!!  I am thrilled and honored!  Now, I’m tagging Byron, Nobody, and a brand new blogger - DidISignOnForThis!  Welcome to the club!  Now don’t put your feet on the furniture, and as my Mom used to say, ”act like you’ve been somewhere before!” 

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 8th, 2007 at 7:05 pm and is filed under Blogging, Life Musings.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.