Memories fade, but time remains

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December 17, 2009

By JIMMY LOWE The Glasgow Daily Times Thu Dec 17, 2009, 12:12 PM CST

I’ve been looking for a gold bracelet with black stones. It’s a specific bracelet that I’m hoping to locate. What I’m looking for is a Christmas gift I gave my wife last year. Sometime while shopping for this year’s gift giving season, she lost the bracelet.

With all the holiday shopping traffic these days, sauntering about with one’s head down can be dangerous. Yet, we’ve chanced it. I’ve returned to the parking lot and store where she thinks it might have slipped away, and she’s retraced her steps as well. All we’ve noticed, though, have been a few chewing gum wrappers and the such.

I didn’t bring it up to her, but this bracelet incident reminded me of the watch we got for our son several years ago. My wife hid that gift somewhere in the house until it would be placed under our tree on Christmas Eve. She hid it so well that still to this day that watch keeps secret time somewhere in its hiding place.

The Winter Solstice will soon bring us our 40th wedding anniversary, and then this Christmas will be our 41st to observe as a married couple. Our celebrating is always doubled as the days dwindle down in December.

For our honeymoon we were headed to a southern resort. But on that snow filled afternoon in 1969, we only made it to Nashville where we were stranded for a few days. That was when we first shopped together for Christmas presents. From Harvey’s, one of Nashville’s big stores at that time, we got several gifts. I couldn’t tell you today just who those gifts went to or what they were. I doubt that those who received them could remember today, either. My wife, though, claims she still recalls each item.

How can she remember what specific gifts she purchased four decades ago, and yet can’t remember where she lost a bracelet or hid a watch? Seems strange to me.

Through the years we’ve enjoyed annual shopping excursions each December to gather gifts for family and friends. As our gift giving list increased, we sometimes tried to get the task completed by separating in the malls. We began to take different paths to find different gifts.

Last week I was maneuvering solo through a throng of shoppers, enjoying the decorations, the music and the anticipation of the season. For a brief moment, I overheard a piece of a conversation between an older married couple and a younger man. The older man said, “I hear ‘em say on the TV, to get more information we should go to dot com. We don’t know nothin’ about that. What’s this dot com stuff?” Then the younger man sized up the older couple and smiled and replied, “You don’t need to waste your time on that. It’s not really important to you. Just use your time to enjoy one another.”

That was all I heard as I walked by, but I was made to think about the priority of always enjoying one another during changing and complicated times. I thought of my wife, shopping away from me in another store. I quickly decided I’d rather we shopped together, even if it took us twice as long. So I turned around and went to find her.

After all, I didn’t want her to lose me.

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