Category: memories

Posted in memories

I don’t remember

Posted on by William Douthwaite
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

On my big dog walk the other day, the idea of God’s omniscience popped into my mind. (Don’t ask me why. It’s not like I’m omniscient!) He has total knowledge of everything. He knows the past, present, and future, every detail about me and his entire creation. In other words, “God knows everything” (1 John 3:20).

  • In some ways, we used to know more than we do now. For instance, I used to know phone numbers. Since they are stored by name in my phone, those digits don’t have a place in my mind. At church recently, the youth director wanted the students to check in digitally. Unfortunately, the parents used their own phone number to register the family. None of the youth could recall that number.
  • I used to be pretty good with directions. Now I need a talking GPS to tell me where to go. I like the fact that my maps app gets me to my destination on the shorted possible route. But if the internet is down, I have no idea where I’m going.
  • I used to know geography. Stamp collecting helped me identify countries all over the world. Many have changed their names, and that knowledge is slipping.
  • I used to be very good at remembering birthdays. Then my family grew exponentially, and I had to make a chart.
  • I had locker combinations memorized in high school. Now, most schools don’t even let the students use lockers.

I read that our minds weren’t designed to remember everything. Our brain sorts out what is important, storing away what it thinks you’ll need to recall. I like to use mnemonic tools and tricks to make my brain retain more data than it normally would. Plus, I write out lists for myself.

God knows everything. The number of hairs on your head. What you’re going to say. How long you’ll live. Everything.

Except a believer’s sin. God says, “I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more” (Hebrews 8:12). The eternal God isn’t starting to forget things. It’s just that the blood of Christ covers up our sin. I might have a hard time forgetting and forgiving myself, but God’s never going to bring it up again.

Posted in color, memories

Glowing orange skies

Posted on by William Douthwaite

After yesterday’s post, the evening sky called and demanded equal time.

I’ve written about the colors of dusk before, awed as the sun painted the bottom of the clouds one final time before retiring for the night. No shade of orange was left behind at the end of this day.

While pink greets me at the beginning a new day, orange won’t let go when that day comes to a close. It hangs on like the embers in the fire pit that glow long after everyone has closed their eyes for the night.

Once again, before I passed two utility poles, the colors had faded, stars appeared, and darkness punched in for the overnight shift.

This picture reminds me of a moment twenty-seven years ago when wild fires burned out of control in our county. A day before we were told to evacuate, we could see the glow on the horizon, wondering if the flames would consume our home. Thankfully, the fire came no closer than half a mile. But the memory is seared into my mind, reawakened when the day ends drenched in every shade of orange you can imagine.

Posted in memories

Disney On Ice: Frozen and Encanto

Posted on by William Douthwaite

My post today is a response to the WordPress prompt, “What was the last live performance you saw?”

We took our three granddaughters to see Disney On Ice at VyStar Veterans Auditorium in Jacksonville, Florida. It was our Christmas present to them, even though we went at the end of March. This year’s show featured performances from two of their favorite movies, Frozen and Encanto, so they were thrilled.

Some time in my youth, I went to see the Ice Capades at the Spectrum in Philadelphia. The only thing I remember about that show was Mr. Frick, a skater who could lean way back to skate under very low poles limbo-style.

The three girls, ages 6, 4, and 2, were dressed in purple princess dresses. Most of the girls in attendance wore every variety of princess dress imaginable. The level of excitement was through the roof.

Of course we stopped for some snacks. With a tray full of cookies, Cheetos, waters, and a cheese tray for my wife and me, we headed for our seats. Row V facing the stage meant we had a great view. We only had to wait ten minutes before the lights dimmed and the show began.

The first ones out on the ice were Goofy and Donald Duck, followed by Mickey and Minnie Mouse, who introduced the first half of the show, Frozen. The talented skaters looked just like Elsa, Anna, and Christoff, along with Olaf and Sven, whose costume accomodated two skaters. Snow fell from the rafters as the skaters jumped and spun to all of our favorite songs.

The twenty-minute intermission seemed too long, but the Zamboni had to smooth the ice while the cast re-costumed for Encanto. The two-year old granddaughter lost interest after a few songs, so I took her out to walk around. We joined many moms, dads, and tired children who had sat in one place as long as they could. Two forty-five minute shows is a lot for the littles.

I thought the cast was very talented. I only noticed one slip and fall. I wonder where they find skaters for these shows. I also wonder what it’s like to skate seven or more shows a week for a season.

The tickets weren’t expensive, but the merch was. So many were waving forty dollar bubble wands and light up scepters. Outside the venue, vendors lined the streets. Inside the halls were lined with souvenir stands. Someone makes a lot of money from these events.

I doubt we’ll go to another ice show like this. It was fun, but once is enough. When my four-year old granddaughter walked in, she exclaimed, “I’ve never seen real ice before!”

Posted in Life, memories

My first grade broken ankle

Posted on by William Douthwaite
Daily writing prompt
Have you ever broken a bone?
View all responses

I don’t have a lot of memories from first grade, but I do remember breaking my ankle at the end of that school year.

Some friends and I were playing on a swing set that included a two person glider. For some reason I put my right foot down as the glider came back, making my foot twist backwards at a painful angle. I hobbled home and my mom, a nurse, looked at the swelling, wasn’t too concerned, and had me put some ice on it.

I went to school the next day and hobbled around as the pain got worse and worse. When I got home, it was more swollen than the day before, so my mom took me to the doctor. This was 1964, so the family doctor was your one stop shop for medical care. The doctor took an x-ray, saw the fracture, and wrapped my ankle up in a heavy plaster cast. For the next four weeks, I hopped around school on crutches as the ankle healed.

Finally, the four weeks were up, and it was time to remove the cast. The doctor used a special circular saw designed to cut only the cast and not the skin beneath. Once he took it off, I remember my right leg floated up as if it were weightless. But just for a moment. Then I was back to normal, assured that an ankle with a healed fracture was stronger than one without.

I found one picture from my dad’s old slides of me in the cast. Looks like I’m having a good time!

Posted in memories, noticing

You remembered!

Posted on by William Douthwaite
Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

I think I’m pretty good with names. I don’t work very hard at it. I just find them easy to remember. For some reason, people’s names stick in my mind. At least most of the time.

As I started down the pet food aisle at Walmart, I heard a voice behind me, “Pastor.” I turned and without even thinking said, “Hey, hi, Kathy!”

“You remembered my name!”

I had not seen her for about two years, but her name was right there on my lips. I didn’t even hesitate. So was her husband, Bob. We chatted for a few moments, then parted to find the things on our shopping lists.

In that moment, though, I couldn’t remember her last name. It was weird, because that doesn’t happen to me. I knew it started with a “B.” And I knew it was unique in some way. And I knew it was somewhere in my brain. But I just couldn’t pull it out of my memory.

I also knew that it would some to me sometime later that day. It’s happened before. I’ll be doing something completely different, and the name will suddenly come to mind. Sometimes it happens in an hour. Other times it takes a whole day. The information is in my head. I just can’t find it in the moment. So my subconscious works in the background, searching through files in my brain until it finds what I’m looking for. If I can’t remember something, I don’t worry. I know it will come to me. And it did. I think I was taking out the trash, and just like that Kathy’s last name popped into my mind.

This is fascinating. Somehow my brain knows what’s relevant and what’s not. If I’m probably not going to need a bit of information, it stuffs it away somewhere, like an old box full of papers up on a shelf. Or to be a little more twenty-first century, like digital files and pictures backed up to a flash drive.

I really like memory tricks. I use the peg list from Kevin Trudeau’s Mega Memory. I used the Memory Palace technique for many of my sermons. I love coming up with silly acrostics to remember lists. For example, I always recite “The Hippo Just Put Loose Corn in the Elephant Pen” to remember the things we ought to focus on in Philippians 4:8. “Whatever is True, Honorable, Just, Pure, Lovely, Commendable, Excellent, Praiseworthy…think about such things.” And one of these days I’m going to work on memorizing a deck of cards. There are a number of clever ways to do that. I still make a lot of written lists, too. Just the process of writing out a list helps me remember.

Having said all that, I’ve been converting old journals into digital form (I’m taking pictures of the pages). On those pages are things I’ve done, places I’ve gone, and people I’ve met that I don’t remember. I’m glad I wrote them down. I think my mind is aware of this. If I wrote it down, it doesn’t need to take up space in my brain.

Memory is a fascinating thing.

Posted in Life, memories

What are you going to do with all those journals?

Posted on by William Douthwaite
Just a few of many journals I’ve filled up.

I began journaling in earnest in 1989. When I started, I used 8-1/2 by 11 inch spiral notebooks. I filled up approximately four per year. In 2010 I started journaling in 5×8 inch hardcover journals. I’ve used all kinds of different ones from Moleskins to Leuchtturm 1917 to my current favorite EMSHOI with 120 gram paper that was a great deal ($11.95) on Amazon. I’ve written on blank pages, dotted pages, and currently use lined journals.

What do I write about? I start by writing about the scripture I’ve read that day, draw a picture illustrating something in that passage, summarize what I did yesterday, what I need to do today, and then come up with ten ideas I could write about. I jot down books I want to read and projects to work on. In the back I have a prayer list. It’s easy to fill up two or three pages a day. A typical journal will last me three months.

So let’s do the math. Four journals a year for thirty four years totals 136 journals. I had them all in two big boxes, prompting the question, “What are you going to do with those?”

That’s a very good question. I doubt that anyone is going to sit down and read these. My handwriting is such that I don’t know if anyone could. I have been sifting through them to put together a timeline of important events in our lives. Without them, I would have forgotten many places we’ve gone and things we’ve done. So I’m not just going to toss them.

Before I retired, I used the duplicator in the church office to scan the pages from the spiral bound notebooks. Once I cut out the metal spiral, I could feed the whole stack into the machine, which would email a file to me of all the pages. That took care of about fifty of them.

It’s not so easy to take apart a bound volume though. So one book at a time, I’ve been taking a photo of each page, uploading the group to my Amazon photos, where I can gather them into an album. It’s tedious work. But I am making progress.

Journals and letters from hundreds of years ago have helped historians write books about the past. Who knows? Maybe my notes and doodles and lists will be needed for a historical record someday.

Posted in memories

Strat-O-Matic baseball

Posted on by William Douthwaite
Daily writing prompt
Describe an item you were incredibly attached to as a youth. What became of it?
View all responses

There weren’t many items I remember being attached to, but one that comes to mind is my Strat-O-Matic baseball game.

Strat-O-Matic baseball is a dice game played with decks of team player cards. Each player chooses a team, sets a line-up, and the game begins. After each dice roll, you look up a result. Just like the real game, your player would ground out, fly out, strikeout, get on base or hit a home run. The game is simple, but it kept my brother and I and a neighbor friend occupied year-round in the 1970s.

I discovered the game when a classmate brought his Strat-O-Matic to school in sixth grade to play on indoor recess days. When I finally had enough money to buy my own game, I think I bought the 1969 edition, which included card decks for all the MLB teams that year. I’m really stretching my memory, but I’m pretty sure I had the Mets and Orioles from that year, who faced off in the World Series.

Later on, I bought a few classic teams from the past, like the 1927 New York Yankees, with Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. Or the 1931 A’s with Jimmie Foxx, my dad’s favorite player. And the 1950 Philadelphia Phillies, who could have won it all, but folded at the end of the season.

We would set up leagues and seasons seasons and play game after game after game. We kept score with pencil and paper, and typed up statistics on my mom’s manual typewriter. While it’s a two person game, you can also play it alone. We spent a lot of time playing Strat-O-Matic baseball.

I left the game behind when I started college in 1975. But my younger brother and a close friend from a few houses away kept playing and playing and playing.

I have no idea what happened to the game. Either my brother has it packed away in a box of memorabilia somewhere, or it got tossed when we sold and emptied out dad’s house. There’s never been another game I spent so much time playing.

Posted in Christmas, memories

A cold, memorable Christmas

Posted on by William Douthwaite
St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, Fort Wayne, IN

At Christmas supper last night, we posed the question, “What was your most memorable Christmas?” That was a toughie. Many Christmas memories blend together in my mind.

Twenty four hours later, I’ve zeroed in on 1983 as my most memorable Christmas.

This was the first year I didn’t go home for Christmas. I was in the middle of my second year of seminary education in Fort Wayne, Indiana. I decided to stay there to play trumpet for Christmas Eve services at historic downtown St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, and then drive to my fiancée’s home in Columbus on Christmas Day.

But it was cold. Really cold. 30 below zero cold. Almost all the other churches in the city cancelled their worship services that night. I was driving a 1980 Volkswagen Rabbit diesel. Diesel fuel has a problem with sub-zero temps and the sad, slow rowl-rowl-rowl of the starter let me know my car wasn’t going anywhere that night. A well-meaning friend suggested, “Just have them inject some ether. That’s how they start up the big rigs.” Since I wasn’t a big rig parked at a truck stop, I called around and got a ride to and from church that Christmas Eve.

The next morning, some friends of my fiancée’s family were headed to Columbus, and gave me a ride to join the family for Christmas Day. From there were were supposed to drive to Philadelphia to spin time with my family. My Father-in-law let us use his pickup truck for the trip. It had dual twenty-five gallon gas tanks to quench its thirst for fuel and got us there and back safely.

On this trip, my future wife got to meet my parents, Labrador Retriever, and former coworkers from Bell Labs.

By the time I got back to Fort Wayne, the temperatures had moderated, and my car started right up. A memorable Christmas in the books.

Posted in Life, memories, Travel

A blizzard, a phone call, and Florida

Posted on by William Douthwaite
Photo by Pixabay: https://www.pexels.com/photo/trees-and-cars-covered-by-snow-512229/

Subfreezing temperatures. Flurries in the forecast. Pretty normal February day in Iowa. White piles along the road reminded me of last week’s snow. The gray sky, leafless trees, and bite in the air testified that spring was still far away.

The car heater had barely warmed up when I pulled into the parking lot. After a quick walk inside, I piled my coat, scarf, hat, and gloves on a side chair and turned on my computer. My car, just a few feet away on the other side of my office window, didn’t seem to mind the cold at all.

Not long before lunchtime, the wind blew the first flakes of snow past my window. As I watched, more and more snow fell, and the winter world’s grays and browns succumbed to a coating of white. The wind picked up as the sky suddenly dumped all of it’s snow at once. I couldn’t even see my car as today’s “flurries” matured into a full on blizzard.

My desk phone rang. It was probably my wife, making sure I was okay. I wasn’t planning on driving anywhere anytime soon. But it wasn’t her. It was someone calling me from Florida. They just wanted to ask if I was open to considering a job change and relocating.

To Florida? The Sunshine State? I said, “Sure,” but in my mind I was thinking, “How about I come down today?” Lol. The interview was in April, and we moved there in June.

That was twenty-eight years ago. And you know, I just don’t miss the gray skies, leafless trees, bite in the air, and driving home in a blizzard.