Let Me Explain

As a child of the 80's, there are certain givens about my younger years. There's regrettable fashion choices, like jelly shoes, color-blocked windbreakers, and teased bangs. There's synthesized music, like Wham! and A-Ha. And then there are iconic movies, like The Karate Kid and The Princess Bride.

I must have watched The Princess Bride over a dozen times growing up. After my first viewing, I went to the library to check out the novel on which it was based. I spent hours learning how to hunt and peck the melody of its theme song ("Storybook Love") on my Casio keyboard.

Yesterday I unexpectedly found myself quoting it while attempting to avoid telling my friend a long-winded story. It's not Inigo Montoya's most famous line, but it's a fantastic line, nonetheless. When attempting to tell Wesley what he missed while he was "mostly dead," Inigo simply says, "Let me explain. No, there is no time. Let me sum up."

This sentiment resonates with me. This is how I feel when I write here after a longer absence. I could sum up whatever life events I recall from the past month. I could sum up the semester, which only has two more weeks of classes. I could I could sum up football games and house rentals, or the family schedule and preparing our yard for winter. I could sum up the Thanksgiving holiday. I could sum up a particularly odd stretch of family health adventures: mono and pneumonia, the stomach bug and potential Lyme's disease, and standard adolescent wisdom teeth surgery.

But sometimes you don't feel like summing up. Sometimes you feel like explaining.

So, let me take a moment to explain a simple moment when our family chose our Christmas tree this weekend. We loaded into our minivan and drove to Tuckaway Tree Farm, which sounds straight out of a Hallmark movie. As we came to a quick, amiable family consensus on which tree to cut, snow started to fall.

Snow! Snow falling while your family is cutting down a Christmas tree! 

Snow falling while your teenaged kids are laughing. Snow falling as you breathe the scent of Douglas fir. Snow falling as you watch a younger family with a small child in a snowsuit who sits in the sled designed to drag the trees back to the checkout station. Snow falling as you realize that you're well past that stage of dragging little ones on sleds. Snow falling as you look over the Christmas trees and your family, and all the years coalesce into small moments like this.

Weeks and months and years keep moving quickly. Time is like the tide; it's a force you can't stop. But when I feel like there's no time and I'm tempted to just "sum up" events of my life, perhaps — just perhaps — I instead need to slow down and quiet my head and heart. I need to explain to myself all the thoughts and feelings that are welling up inside me.

Let me sum up? No, there is no time. Let me explain.