Tag: Memories

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Fitted Bed Sheets

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I had the opportunity to go on a youth retreat this past weekend with my church youth group. After sitting on the noise-filled bus for nearly three hours, we finally arrived at the camp where we would be staying. That evening, after more noise and activity, the three boys in my room got their beds ready to sleep on. “What’s this?” one of the boys asked, as he started to unfold a fitted bed sheet he had pulled from his bag, holding it from his fingers as if it was a banana peel he had picked up off the ground. Another boy, obviously well schooled in his sheet classification, knew a fitted sheet from a t-shirt and was proceeding to pull it over his bed. Putting one corner just over the mattress, he would move to the other side, pulling the sheet off of where he had just put it in the process. Another, on the top bunk, was having the same trouble. Barely laying the sheet over the corner of the bed, he would then expect it to stay there as he pulled the remainder of the sheet over the far side of the mattress. Apparently, putting fitted bed sheets on a bed isn’t common junior-high-boy knowledge.Thankfully, a couple tips and a helpful hand later, I did manage to show them how putting the corner of the bed sheet under the corner of the mattress would stop the sheet from popping off the bed again and again.

I moved into a boarding school in sixth grade. Fitted sheets? No problem. I did start struggle later on in my years, as my sheets began to shrink with years of washes. This only got harder as my boarding school mattresses were eventually replaced by the larger, thicker mattresses I experienced once I got to Canada. Fitted sheets were quite normal, and I quickly got used to making up my bed, again and again. I’m thankful for my years in boarding. It’s experiences like these, watching anxious boys crawl into foreign beds that make me realise what a blessing it was. I understand. I understand what it’s like to be in a strange room. I forget sometimes, that not every junior high boy moves into a new room, with a new room mate, and has to try to fall asleep on a new bed each year. In boarding, life would hit the reset button again every few months, as my siblings and I would readjust to our beds at home for a couple weeks over break. Then we would be back to school again. The strange beds became familiar — the familiar became strange. And I would find myself lying awake in the dark, trying to drown out the silence of the fan that wasn’t turning above my head. Silence is one of the hardest sounds to ignore.

I don’t mean to make my experiences sound all rosy. Boarding had it’s downsides too. There aren’t many better ways to learn how much you dislike about people than having to live with them year after year. However, before long, the rough edges of my own selfishness did start to wear down. They had to — since they were constantly scraping into someone else and their selfishness corners. Thankfully God works in these years of friction, ensuring the little pieces that are chipped away simply smooth the edges, rather than leave gaping holes of trauma and bitterness. I’m thankful. I’m thankful that my parents were willing to let go when I asked. I’m thankful that I had friends who cared about me, and who made my experience a valuable one. I’m thankful God orchestrated good things out of what could have so easily become a mess. On top of all this, I’m thankful I know what a fitted sheet is and how to put it on a bed. I still may not know how to fold one, but not everyone is perfect. I’ll save that magical skill for the mothers of us silly boys.

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Fragile Places

Some places seem to be much more fragile than others. This summer, I had the opportunity to go and help out at a Bible camp just for a couple of weeks, to help as a cabin leader. At the start of the week, kids would pile into the camp with their parents, some nervous, some excited to get to know each other and enjoy the games and many excitements of camp. And for the whole week, I would find myself extremely busy and happy spending time with the nine twelve-year-olds in my cabin, counsellors, and all the other kids running around the camp as well. Doing devotions, praying together, eating together and playing games together, we soon got to know each other very well, and before long we felt like a little family – the nine boys, myself and my junior counsellor.

However, before long, the week came to a close. The kids packed up and got ready to home. Dirty clothes and numerous little injuries told the story of all the fun they had. The night before the boys had to leave, some talked about how they wanted to come back next year and do the same thing – that we should all come back next year and be together again. I was happy to hear that they enjoyed it, and to hear them long for a ‘repeat’ in a way, but I knew the truth – that this week could never be repeated again. Camp is a fragile place. It lasts for a week, and in that week there’s an amazing mix of kids and counsellors, which makes the whole time so worthwhile. But this mix of kids and counsellors and experiences can’t last forever, and it can never happen again. It just won’t. Never again will all the same kids be together, with all the same counsellors and be able to enjoy being together all over again. That’s life.

MCS, my old boarding school, is a fragile place. I can remember in my final year of high school, lying in bed, thinking about the changes that would take place when graduation day came. Never again could I walk through these halls I knew to find the same friends in the same rooms. Never again would I take my toothbrush at bedtime and seek out the company of the guys in my class while I brushed – to sit on their beds and try to talk through the toothpaste to them. We would all be replaced. Soon these rooms would be someone else’s, or they would be left empty – as they have been. Some of us might come back and visit and, by chance, may even be together at the same time, and be able to re-live some shadow of our experiences in high school, but it would never be the same.

Some places are solid. Like a tree or house – even the school building we spent so many years in, these places stay more or less the same. Of course, there are always changes. Trees grow bigger, houses change – but they are still there, they continue on. You can climb a tree you climbed in your youth and sit on the same branch, and look out to the same view and, for the most part, it can be the same.

Camp and boarding school are like grenades. All the fragments and particles share space and memories together for moment in time, but when their time is up, the pin is pulled and all the pieces explode across the world – blown into a million tiny shards. Exciting. Painful. Never again can they be put back together. Never again can they be the same.

However, this doesn’t make the fragile places less precious. I really hope my feelings are never mistaken for bitterness or anger, because it’s not like that at all. These places are still so valuable, and the experiences and memories don’t lose their meaning because of the violent separation involved. But I know that some places and experiences will never be the same. One might gather a few fragments to piece together something that looks similar, and bears some semblance of the original object, but still, everything has changed.
These are the fragile places.

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My Blue Trunk of Memories

I opened up my blue trunk today. My trunk that holds the things that mean a lot to me. I always find it to be such a strange and exciting moment. I go into it thinking that there are probably things I can get rid of now, seeing as I have changed over time, and yet I always surprise myself. It’s like discovering treasure. Some of the things I can hardly even remember until I’ve seen the little things hidden inside. I open up an old candy tin to reveal little trinkets I’ve collected over the years. I have a couple flag pins, from both Canada and Pakistan. There’s a squished penny from the dinosaur museum in Drumheller, which I can still remember begging my dad to let me buy. There’s a ‘dog-tag’ my senior class made when we graduated, a shield necklace with a verse on it, and an old plastic patakha dart that looks like it’s been through a lot of life. I look at each of them with a fresh wonder, and slowly put them each back into the tin. Everything is important, every little piece of memory.

Below the tin is a box of coins from all over the world – Middle Eastern, Oriental, South American and European. Some are sorted into plastic sheets by country, while others are in bags and little containers. Still others lie loose in the box. I suppose I couldn’t be bothered to put them into any kind of container at the time. The coins still intrigue me, and I find a few lying around I have collected recently and throw them in too, before closing the box.

In the trunk are my high school banners, an old shawl, an afghan scarf, a knife from nepal, a painted teapot, a couple picture albums and some other odd treasures. Inside a folder are old stories I wrote when I was younger, or pieces of them. There’s a little book I printed with my brother too. They make me smile as I see the little boy with a big imagination and huge hopes for these ideas. Now they sit in my blue trunk.

Below all these is a folder of papers. Page after page of old report cards, boarding reports and school awards. And as I skim through the pages, I can’t help but smile. Not only is it like walking through the life of a little boy growing up, but it’s as if I’m walking through the life of my parents, watching this little boy grow older in time. One report says of my little kindergarten self, “He understands basic concepts of size and shape, sorting, counting number recognition and measurement.” Another reads “Josh is ready for grade one work, which he should cope with easily.” I’m glad I made it into grade one. I feel that would have been a problem otherwise. Some of the comments are just downright hilarious. My P. E. teacher from my public school in Pakistan wrote “during P. T. display, the movement of your body was flexible.” Glad to hear it.

As I read through these forms I can’t help but think about my parents, and what they thought of this little boy, who was “quiet” but “enthusiastic”. I can’t even remember those days, or my thoughts and memories at the time. I smile as I see myself growing through the years. Thankfully I always did fairly well in school, so my reports are generally encouraging, but not all of them. There are the few that tell of the times when I was not very pleasant to have. One from junior high reads “Josh has shown little interest in being a part of junior high boarding life. He also has not happily joined in the organized weekend events.” I can remember those times. I can remember my attitude, and I can remember the people around me who were disappointed. But most of all, I can remember and imagine what it would have been like for my parents to read this about me. It makes me embarrassed even now. Thankfully it was a passing theme, and I soon grew to have a better attitude in school and boarding life, and to be the happy, hardworking boy that I once was.

All through these pages, time and time again, I see my parents love for me. Even the fact that they cherished all these reports, right down to my little kindergarten self, and filed them away for me to have later in life. I can’t get over how special my parents are, and how much they cared about me all through my years growing up and now today as well. They loved me through good and bad, and always pressed me to do better and to be better – not just at school, but in life and in my character. I can remember the talks we had when I wasn’t doing well and I had let them down, and I can remember their joy when I may them proud and did my best. But most of all, I can always remember the love.

Opening up my trunk is always a very introspective journey back into memories. Surrounded by these pieces of myself, and of my past, I seem to forget the present altogether. And it’s not until I happened to glance into a mirror and saw the bearded face of a twenty-year-old staring back at me, that I realized a lot of life has gone by, and that I’m not that little boy I’m reading about in the pages. And yet, I am somehow, because as I read through the pages, and hold that old white patakha dart, I almost feel as though I was eight again, putting these things in my old candy tin for the first time, because I loved them and I wanted to cherish them.

Mummy and Daddy, I just want you to know, once more, that I love you so much, and I’m so thankful for all the love that you have given me over the years.