Where Moments Go

Maybe time collects.

Not in years or minutes, but in the things that were there while we lived them.

A guitar can hold a father's hands.

An unfinished blanket can hold months of waiting.

A hair tie can hold a game of fetch.

A sticky note can hold years of Mondays.

A stuffed bear can hold a childhood—and still be there long after it ends.

None of these things look any different because of what they carry.

But maybe time has a thickness we can't see.

Maybe the things around us have been collecting it all along.

My dad named his guitar Albert.

He is a blue Gretsch Streamliner, and my dad was proud of him.

He had recently revived his old band. He was recording music again, playing shows. Music was his passion.

Shortly before he went into the hospital, I went with him to have Albert tuned.

While we waited, we wandered around the music store, and I asked him about passion. I envied his. I had never found anything that seemed to live inside me the way music lived inside him.

I remember seeing a blue acoustic guitar.

I wish.

When my dad died, he left Albert to me.

I was caught by surprise. Of everything he owned, he had chosen to leave me one of his most prized possessions.

Albert sits in my bedroom now.

I see him every day.

He hasn't changed.

But he is thicker than he was that afternoon in the music store.

My dad's hands are there. His music. His excitement over getting the band back together. Our walk through the store. The questions I asked him. The blue guitar I wanted without knowing another one would eventually become mine.

A part of him still lives there.

Since learning to crochet, I have developed a weakness for yarn. Over time, that weakness has grown into a collection.

One day, several years ago, Joann’s was having a sale. I found a thick, soft, variegated blue yarn and bought several skeins.

I had no plans for it.

Then I found out I was pregnant for the third time.

I started turning the yarn into a blanket for my unborn son. When I felt sick, I crocheted. When I worried about the future, I crocheted. My hands stayed busy while I waited for him.

The plan was to finish it before he arrived.

He came four weeks early.

The blanket is still unfinished.

It sits in a basket on top of a shelf in my living room, where I pass it every day. I haven't had time to finish it.

I made those stitches while I was waiting for him.

Then he arrived.

The blanket didn't get any bigger.

But somehow, it got thicker.

My dearest companion was a cat who liked to play fetch.

His favorite toys weren't really toys. He would find hair ties I had dropped on the floor or discarded somewhere and bring them to me.

I would fling one across the room.

He'd chase it, bat it around, pick it up, and bring it back so we could do it again.

Sometimes, he left them in his food dish.

Almost like a gift.

I have a drawer full of hair ties now. I wear my hair up almost every day.

He lived nearly twenty years. Even in his old age, he would still occasionally find one and play with it.

I don't know which ones he touched.

Maybe the one I pull from the drawer tomorrow once crossed the room between us.

Maybe it didn't.

There is no special hair tie tucked safely away. No way to separate his from all the others.

They're just hair ties.

But they aren't as thin as they used to be.

For several years, we only had weekends.

We had already been together for seven years, on and off, but Sunday still meant goodbye.

I hated Sundays.

One weekend, before my fiancé left, he put a sticky note on my desk.

I didn't find it until Monday morning.

It made me smile.

Years have passed since that Monday.

The note is still taped to my computer monitor in my office. I sit in front of it every day. I read it every day.

And it still makes me smile.

It's just a small piece of paper with a few words written by someone I no longer have to wait until the weekend to see.

But it has been sitting there, quietly collecting Mondays.

Grumpy Bear was my favorite Care Bear growing up.

I was always drawn to the outcasts, and I felt sorry for him. While the other Care Bears seemed happy, Grumpy was allowed to be grumpy.

I had a stuffed Grumpy Bear that I carried around with me.

I don't have that same bear anymore.

But somehow, I never stopped collecting him.

There are Grumpy Bears scattered throughout my house now. A T-shirt. Figurines. Stuffed animals. Two Funko Pops, one given to me by my fiancé for Christmas a few years ago.

There's even one permanently sitting on a cloud on the back of my left leg.

And every night, all these years later, I climb into bed and wrap my arms around a giant stuffed Grumpy Bear.

He still gives me comfort.

The bear I hold isn't the one I carried as a little girl.

But sometimes, time doesn't stay inside one thing.

Time can follow us.

Maybe that's why we keep things.

Not because of what they are, but because of everything that happened while they were there.

A guitar sits in my bedroom.

A blanket waits unfinished in a basket.

Hair ties fill a drawer.

A sticky note clings to a monitor.

A stuffed bear sleeps in my arms.

Ordinary things.

Except they have been beside me while my life happened.

They carry hands I can't hold anymore, moments I couldn't keep, people I still can, and versions of myself that no longer exist.

Maybe time doesn't disappear when it passes.

Maybe some of it stays behind.

Just maybe,

time isn't so thin.