Have you considered your life?  If so, how often have you? Let’s face it we don’t do it often and when we do it is because something good or bad brings you to the point you have to assess it.  Of course for me, adversity has been dogging me the past two years.  I grown accustomed to it. But recently I had seen a produced piece on “You Are Your Memories” which really made me think about the good times and bad times in my life that make up my life.

Of course I’m like most people I can’t tell you who lost in last year’s SuperBowl or even what I got from Christmas last year... we’ll actually I got nothing last year that one was easy. :) 

Memories are those photos of happier times you have locked in your mind.  Or small movies of time you recall in your mind when others are long forgotten.   For instance, I guess Lars Hindsley is the guy that remembers the moment he held his first son Declan in his arms and realized what his life was about.  I guess I’m the guy that recalls receiving my second son into my arms from the doctor as he was born and walking him to the table to be weighed and measured and the little sock hat the nurse placed on him.  I can watch that movie in my mind over and over, anytime.  No one an take that from me. 

My memories go back to the day when I had a red wagon standing on a brick sidewalk on Harrison Street in Wilmington Delaware and two boys took it from me leaving me standing there crying.  I heard later my older brother retrieved it for me.   I recall having a G.I. Joe doll that I wanted to throw in the sky to see him fly and he landed on a porch roof of a row home at my baby sitters in Wilmington and standing there thinking, “I’ll never get him back.”  And I didn’t.  I was too scared to tell anyone I lost him.  I recall as a grown man returning to that street thinking, "I wonder if he is still up there?"  I recall when I finally married, taking my wife to that street and telling her this story and how she could care less.  I realized my memories were best locked away for my own good. 

Memories are just that important.  I recall during my first year of marriage my wife was irrational and rude if she ever saw a photo of any girl in my past life.  Once again I realized how important memories were.  I took every photo and every photo album I had before I was married, bought a trunk, locked them away and moved that trunk to a family members home.  It was time I keep my memories safely locked inside me.  It has been that way ever since.

I recall the day my best friend saved my life in the ocean and collapsing in the sand after he saved me from drowning.  I remember crying like a baby that I was still alive and that I actually accessed my life’s priorities that day.  I recall us heading back with my boat with me in silence, staring forward as I was just glad to be alive.  I recall the one single thing I told myself would change, that I would stop my search for a woman and realize my happiness was predicated on me, not someone else.  I recall telling myself I was a fool for putting more importance on finding a woman than I did on just enjoying the life I had.

And that is where I think memories make you.  There are certainly great times in my life that I not only remember for the happier times I lived, but the lessons I learned from them.   Your memories make you because of the lessons that come with those memories.  For instance, the lesson I learned above when I almost drowned.  Or like this lesson...

I recall a time I had gone tubing with a girlfriend Noel Olsen.  My best friend Keith Wright and a few other people were there too.  Bill Appel, John McDermott’s sister Trisha, and a few other folks were also there.  We had a big group.   We all parked our cars down stream and then drove upstream.  We parked way too far.  When we put in we found the water was moving pretty good.  But based on a prior tubing trip that lasted over 8 hours with two friends Mike Ziegler and Dana Adams, I knew that on this day we drove too far upstream and the creek would not flow fast.    Sure enough we turned the first bend and wham!  The creek was placid and still.  I almost laughed but I was filled with a sinking feeling that it would be along day.  I tried to tell them, I tried to tell them when we were driving.  I tried to warn them as we put in.  But in the end, nobody listened.  My girlfriend Noel could only think of the fun we would have drifting down the creek.  But I warned them.  I warned them you don’t drift, you float. You have to paddle with your arms and it gets tiring. 

Sure I seemed like a stick in the mud.  At that time I was, I admit it.  I remembered thinking, “It’s Sunday.  I have to work tomorrow.”  Well there we were, floating.  Everyone saw a tree with a rope swing and started playing and having fun.  But we were not moving.  Our cars were down past Delaware race track past Stanton and we were still in Newark.  And the White Clay Creek had not seen rain an a few weeks.  I told them. 

So my friend Keith comes up to me while I’m being a sourpuss to Noel, “Lars, it’s what you make it, make lemonade out of lemons man.”  Keith emphasized.  And at that moment you’d think I’d have an epiphany.  But this is real life, no Hollywood ending here; sorry.  But I was struck but what Keith said.  And I’m one of those guys that even then ate up adversity and spat out the bones.  So what he said registered, and I wanted to make the best of it, but in this particular case I just didn’t feel like walking alone the creek bed without a towel getting wet, then drying, getting wet then drying etc... 

Some lessons you have to learn after the fact.  And I did.   And you know, I don’t remember all the negative energy of that day if you want to know what I remember.  I remember that day as a good day.  I learned a lesson from a friend.  Well sort of.  He actually used my saying, “Make lemonade out of lemons” on me.  He heard me say it enough but the words, “It’s what you make it” are the words that really hit home.  I took that lesson from Keith that day and applied it all my life.  For instance, years ago my ex-wife threatened me with divorce.   She said some hateful things.  I recall thinking of how life would play out if we divorced.  At one point I told her, “I’ve been poor before, I can handle it, you can’t.”  That all came from me knowing that as long as I had my children, I’d be happy.  And whatever my outcome, it would be “what I made it.”  If I lose my home, wife and job, those are things I have to accept and make the best of what is left. And the reality is, I have all that I need. 

My memories made me in this case.  My memory of that fateful day when I was tubing with friends has been a lifelong lesson.  So if you ever see on TV a piece done about you are your memories, don’t just assume it is that photo of you smiling in the sunshine or that day you had your arms wrapped around your best friend.   You memories are also what you took from that day in your mind or that photo you have locked in your mind. 

I’ll leave you with a few photos of my life.