Events

I am sure you all have them, moments in time that you remember with such clarity that you can relive them in your mind. Those of my parent's generation often point to Kennedy's assasination as one of those moments. They'll ask "Where were you?" Out will come the story from that person's point of view. It's like time telescopes down, from the normal running to some perverted second by second, breath by breath time. What sounds like it might take a few hours, really only took 10 seconds or 5 minutes.

My (growing) list, in chronological order:

1. Space Shuttle Challenger I was home from school on a snow day, watching the shuttle launch on TV (back when shuttle launches were newsworthy, preempting all TV). I remember seeing Challenger disintigrate and not believing it, and running upstairs to tell my brother, and he didn't believe it either.

2. The Fall of the Berlin Wall This was in my first year of college. I walked into my dorm room and saw everyone gathered in front of our little 19inch TV (a luxury in those days!) watching Regan say "Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"

3. OJ's verdict Posting our wedding invitations will always be inextricably linked with OJ being declared Not Guilty.


Of course, the most important to me was the moment I knew of Dad's death. My boyfriend (now Mr LSG) and I had just spent the weekend at massive Phish concert, The Clifford Ball, renting a Winnebago with some friends and enjoying a little crunchy hedonism at the apex of the summer. We drank, we watched the concert, some smoked, the guys wore mumuus. We laughed (gagged, swore "Never Again!") about emptying the waste receptacle of the Winnebago before returning it.

Mr LSG and I checked our voicemail after arriving home, because this was before cellphones were ubiquitous. We actually had a cellphone, one of those book-sized bag phones, but had neglected to give the phone number to our families because, well, it was before you thought to do that. Even now, I can feel the creeping dread as one by one the messages became gradually more tense -- starting with "Hi it's mom please call" and "Hi it's your brother please call", leading to "I don't know where you are but your father's been in an accident" and ending with the painfully terse "please call as soon as you can". From what I now know, Dad was alive when the first message was left, and dead by the last. I remember my legs giving way, the pit in my stomach, the whirling silence in our (dark, we hadn't even turned on the lights yet) apartment. I sat on the (off white, wide wale corduroy hand-me-down pull-out) couch while Mr LSG called to find out what was going on. His look when it was clear it was bad. Me saying "no no no no" and the long stunned drive out to my Mom's house.

There. I've just relived it.