they said the past won't rest until we leave it behind.

many of my friends tell me i have the memory of an elephant, and my response is usually that my twin sister does too. our friends or colleagues astoundingly ask how on earth we remember everything. our answer is that we don't know. we just do. we remember details of stories - whether it be an outfit someone was wearing or who was there, a movie line or even a short monologue, and we can reenact a story with the exact details as it unfolded.  now, my dear readers, please note this means sometimes [eh hem, often], i don't remember important things, i.e. the global volume of a key footwear style i am working on, or how to calculate a margin without my fancy little spreadsheet someone else created for me. instead that brain space is occupied with memories of who else got the presidential physical fitness award every year with me in elementary school... (my bff whitney gooley, and kristen bourum btw - great little gymnasts), or what song was stuck in my head as our high school field hockey team heartbreakingly lost in the regional finals to Centreville my senior year, (Eagle Eye Cherry's, Save Tonight.... and for the record, an opponents shot went off my copa mundial left shoe into the goal. ugh, i still can't even talk about it).


i digress.


so last night i stayed in on a friday night. yes, because that is perfectly fine and yes, because i am 28 and sometimes like to just vedge, even on a friday.  i had a crazy busy week of work and evening plans, all worth it of course, tuesday through thursday.  After working too hard on a friday in the summer, (yes i am getting soft), sitting in traffic for 90 minutes en route home due to a lovely Red Sox game, plan making was not going to happen. absolutely not going to happen.


i dragged my butt out for a slow run, showered and ate, and while my hair air dried all wavy and weird (which everyone seems to love but me), i listened to the new arcade fire album.  As Suburban War was playing on repeat per my doing....... i got up and slammed my pinky toe so hard and ferociously on the edge of the kitchen counter.


we've all done this.
the pinky toe.
one of the tiniest and most painful parts of the human body to slam.
and i believe...
the slamming usually occurs when we are by ourselves.


i sat on the floor, rocking back and forth on my rear end, making that scrunched face with the eyes closed so tightly, cradling the most wee member of my size 7.5 foot and i just winced. even as my phone rang only a few feet away and i wondered who it was, my mind was brought to the movie Lost in Translation, and the scene when Scarlett Johansen's character, lost and alone in Japan, winced and held her pinky toe in her hotel room in the middle of Tokyo. i remember thinking that it was such a real, human, moment.


remembering the first time i saw Lost in Translation, one of my favorite films that many people dismiss as boring and they "didn't get," made me think about the context in which i saw it. i came home one weekend from college in the fall, in a walking boot, with a terrible achilles injury. it was my senior year, and week by week, i was losing my chance to prove myself and continue to run fast after a huge breakthrough my junior year and solid summer of training.  i was really sad. i wasn't able to sleep at night. all of my eggs were in that basket, and the basket was broken. i remember seeing the movie with my wise older sister, and afterward going to the Amphora cafe where we had blueberry pie and a cup of coffee after midnight and we laughed. i remember i was in such a down spot, and when you're 21 and you just want to run, well you think the world is over. and oh how wrong we are, but in that moment we're not.


so here i was, home on a friday night, overworked and exhausted, (which if you know me always puts me on the brink of tears); i then proceeded to watch and cry over two episodes of BostonMed. i went to bed thinking how life happens so insanely fast and incredible. we could unknowingly be in a significant space in time, one where we'll look back as our older self and know we learned so much from, and still have compassion for where we were at that moment. we can look back with an endearing understanding how things end up smaller than we thought, but nonetheless meld into memories we call on at the oddest times sitting on our kitchen floor in a tank top and boy shorts as a 28 year old with a toe that feels like it's the size of the Empire State building.


i think no matter how hard we slam that pinky toe and how alone we are at that moment wincing in pain.... we always get up don't we? the throbbing always fades, and we find ourselves perfectly able to go onto the next thing.


xo....
cw