(SitNews) Ketchikan, Alaska - This time of year is scary because in just a few weeks it will be summer, so there’s this big temptation to rush through May.

It’s scary because once you start peddling to pick up speed, you can’t seem to slow it down in time for summer. Before you know it, it’s September. The only choice I have is to drag my feet and have as much fun as possible in May.

This delicate, vital time of year starts with a trip to Tucson for Mom’s hip surgery, which certainly isn’t a vacation, but it will be the second time my brother, Mom and I are together since she had a brain aneurysm that almost killed her. Family reunions are much more enjoyable when ICU’s aren’t involved.

So we’re meeting down there to cheer Mom’s new hip. The procedure can apparently be done pretty easily and she’ll be out of the hospital within two days if all goes well.

Tucson is great because it’s where I went to college, so when the 2000s station on Sirius plays, I am taken to El Minuto for chicken burritos enchilada style, Sabino Canyon for hikes and of course various other college events given the right song. Sometimes I’m caught shockingly off-guard by an artist like Ludacris. I’m not really a Ludacris fan, but a few of his songs are woven into the fabric of my collegiate nostalgia whether I like it or not. Don’t even get me started on Nelly or BBMak.

The little historian that works the filing cabinets of memory in your brain knows where the good stuff is and what music to pair it to.

Anyway, it makes me think about college and how much I liked it and miss it. But I wouldn’t want to go back. I’m over college and it’s over for me.

There’s no getting younger. Impossible. But you can still remember good times and wonder if you remember it all accurately.

That is what it’s about, right? It doesn’t matter if it really happened exactly the way you think it did, it matters that you had experiences worth remembering. That college was a time with people, not just four years worth of studying to earn a piece of paper.

Weird memories stick out, like when I ordered the steak at a coffee shop. It was five bucks, and I think I still was ripped off. I wonder what memory that overtook, you know? Because there are only so many memories the brain can keep on hand. I think that one steak replaced all of that upper division Anthropology course that was a 3-credit tranquilizer.

Anyway, it will be great for Mom to get a new hip, to see my brother and revisit landmarks of my college days, when life moved faster than it ever has.
And no, I won’t be going to that coffee shop that sold the $5 steaks. It closed a long time ago. Health violations.

Jeff Lund ©2016

Jeff Lund is a Teacher, Freelance Writer, living in Ketchikan, Alaska
Follow him on Twitter and Instagram @alaskalund
Contact Jeff at Email – aklund21@gmail.com

http://www.jlundoutdoors.com

SitNews ©2016
Stories In The News
Ketchikan, Alaska

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