Lists

lost and found

by Jeneen R. Garcia

to be published on December 31, 2005 

 

 

My father puts down his glasses and finally rolls up the calendar. After hours of concentration, he has finished recording at the back pages of the 2005 calendar what he ate for the last meals of the year. It is something he has done for a couple of years now, listing every single thing he eats in a little notebook until he has more time to transfer everything to The Calendar.

 

And it’s not just what he eats that he lists down. Every single purchase he makes, the content of every text message he sends and receives, probably even every place he goes to each day--everything finds its way into a little notebook.

 

It’s for keeping track of what’s happened, he says. As one grows older, the years blur into each other as life flies by faster. Knowing what you ate exactly a year ago, or two years ago, perhaps gives you a better handle on all your other memories. How the kitchen smelled when the phone rang with bad news. How the light in the dining room flickered the day the kaldereta turned out perfect. All the little moments that make up a year, all the little moments that give each year a flavor different from all the other years before, bland though it may sometimes be.

 

I, too, have my own notebook, something I’ve kept way before my father started his. Ever since I was eight, lists have been a source of comfort. For me, they were a way to contain the largeness of the world on a single page. I made lists of all the radio stations I could tune into, the songs I knew according to theme, the names of all the birds I came across in encyclopedias.

 

Later, lists became a way to carry all my dreams and wants and plans safely in my pocket. In high school, the girls in our class wrote a list of qualities we wanted in a guy. We all agreed to put it in our wallets for easy reference whenever someone with potential came along.

 

Though I didn’t get all the things I wanted, or get to do all the things I planned, having everything intact in a list made it alright--I ALREADY had it all in the palm of my hand. No matter the ravages of time, the lists stayed whole, reminded me what I was about.

 

I kept a list of all the islands I’ve been to, another of all the places I wanted to go. A list of things I’ve done that most people haven’t, and things I want to do before I die. Even now when I dream less, I still bring a small notebook wherever I go with lists of what I hope to (both have to and want to) accomplish in a month, a week, a day.

 

And then later, I began lists of lessons I’d learned and my subsequent resolutions. I still have a list I titled “Things to Do for a Better Semester”, which, tragically, I wrote only in my last year in college. I have lists of everything I’ve learned about photography and poetry and moving out and choosing a place to rent and, well, life. Like my father, I’m a packrat; I list so I never lose anything.

 

I suppose it’s a natural progression that I, too, start to keep track of the years by making a list of things I’ve learned in 2005.

 

1. Some things, like cooking, you can only really learn with practice.


2. Things you don’t have time to practice on, like cooking, you learn to do through sheer confidence.


3. Some things you’ve rarely done in your life, you amazingly learn to do just because you’re older. Like cooking.

The best lists just keep on growing.