The evening is memorable for no reason other than it is remembered.
Remembered so well it can almost be felt. Remembered in the way we remember to breathe, deeply, fully, automatically, for no other reason than it must be done.
Perhaps, the memory lingers because it was the same summer my wife and I married, the summer I became both a husband and a father.
Perhaps, the evening has stayed with me because it was one of the first times I had mowed grass since my teenage years. After years of living in dorms and apartments, house-renting led to the sweet sweat of row after row of mowed grass.
Perhaps that evening stays because I had changed positions at the paper, a new job, new responsibilities.
Perhaps, the great home-run race of Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa has etched the memory forever in my mind.
Any one of these answers, all of these answers would be, could be the reason. They are, but they aren’t.
The evening was not the wedding day of my new life with my wife; in fact, my wife and son were not even home this particular evening. It was one of the first times I had cut grass in years, but not the first time. My job change had happened a few weeks prior. McGwire and Sosa may have both hit home runs that night but no record was broken.
Yet, nearly a dozen years later, the evening remains fresh. Off work early. Arriving home on a warm summer evening. Changing from office clothes to yard clothes. Cranking up the push mower. The back and forth, row after row, of mowing the grass. The sun sliding slowly out of the sky. Mowing finished, sitting on the back porch, sipping a beer, reading a magazine article about the McGwire-Sosa rivalry, as dusk darkens the ink on the slick white pages, waiting for my wife and son to come home, breathing, sweating, the crinkle of magazine paper, a breeze, the taste of a beer so cold it has no taste ...
Each life has moments that rise above the rest. The look on a loved one’s face just before everything changes. The slow-motion horror of something gone wrong. The elation of love realized. The birth of a child. The death of a family member. The achievements and failures. The wins and losses.
This particular evening in 1998 has none of those milestones, neither good nor bad. It was one evening in a lifetime of evenings. An evening that, taken on the face values of its schedule of events, has no reason to be remembered.
Yet, seeing Mark McGwire’s face in the news this week took me back to that evening, as simple as inhaling, the memory returns, and I am briefly back in the summer of 1998 ... again.
Though the years, when this evening returns, unbidden but welcome, I have wondered why it stands out, why it is so remembered. This week it hit me, a revelation nearly 12 years in the making.
Memories of that evening remain because I was at peace with myself, my God and the world.
What evening could be more rare than that? What moment could be more important in a life lived?
Dean Poling is The Valdosta Daily Times assistant managing editor. His new book, “Waiting For Willie,” a novel, is available at The Valdosta Daily Times’ 201 N. Troup St. offices.
Dean Poling
An evening to remember
- Dean Poling
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Roosevelt Marshall
Roosevelt Marshall of Valdosta passed this life Dec. 14, 2010. Funeral services will be held at 3 p.m. at Union Cathedral with Bishop Wade S. McCrae, Pastor officiating. Burial will follow in Sunset Hill Cemetery. Final rites are entrusted to Harrington Funeral Home.
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Alice W. Johnson
Alice W. Johnson, 55, of Valdosta died on Monday, Oct. 11, 2010 at the Langdale Hospice House following a lengthy illness. Services for Alice W. Johnson will be held at 4 p.m. today, Thursday, Oct. 14, 2010 in the chapel of the Carson McLane Funeral Home with the Rev. Jay Watkins officiating. The burial will follow in the Riverview Memorial Gardens. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to Langdale Hospice 2263 Pineview Drive, Valdosta Ga. 31602 or to the American Cancer Society Hope Lodge, 2121 SW 16th Street Gainesville, Florida 32608. Condolences to the family may be conveyed online at www.mclanefuneralservices.com. — Carson McLane Funeral Home
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Not under his breath either. He talked like nobody’s business. -
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Less than 18 percent of Lowndes County’s registered voters participated in Tuesday’s primary election. That sounds like a mandate of an apathetic populace that wants to do things differently. -
Wiregrass, um, Technical something or other
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Roosevelt Marshall
