On Decennials

The thing about decennials is that once 10 years have passed, you can no longer think of something as being "just a few years ago."  Shoot, you arguably can't tell yourself "it was just a few years ago" after only, say, 5 years, or more than 1 presidential administration--and certainly not after 7 or 8 years.  But something about 10 years--the looming menace of that big round number--really forces you to face the facts: the things you once experienced are now officially too long ago. 

Decennials have been on my mind lately, because just a few months ago, I quietly observed the decennial of my return home from LDS mission service in Puerto Rico.  I even scanned some old photos and posted them here.  Then, just a scant few days later, I observed the decennial of my mother's untimely passing.

See, here's the thing: my entire childhood and adolescent years and everything that happened to me before my mission are all a dreamlike haze to me now, visions from some other life.  However, I can still draw in my mind a clear sequence of events from my mission homecoming to the present moment,  all as though it were all yesterday.  My mission is the great epistemological break in my life.

But, upon the Decennial, my mission is now officially too long ago now; and what now gives me pause is that all the other things I've done since my mission are about to cross their decennials, too!

Case in point: this weekend is the decennial of me breaking my ankle in a sledding accident on one of the only hills in Illinois.  I still have a plate and 5 screws under my skin there; and there are no doubt people I knew that winter who, to this day, primarily remember me being in either a wheelchair, a pair of crutches, or a walking cast.

Just 3 months after I got home from Puerto Rico, you see, my Dad sent me to Nauvoo for a BYU college semester studying church history (the man who baptized my Dad was teaching there, and it was important to my Dad that I get to know him better).  Yet I still catch myself absently thinking of that semester as something that only happened "a little while ago"--and this in the face of the fact that the academy there was torn down at least 8 years ago! (I reminisced about it here). 

What's more, I was in Nauvoo recently, showing my folks around, when against all odds I ran into a girl I knew there whom I hadn't seen since--in fact, I didn't recognize her at first.  She's long married now, with kids, pushing 30 and complaining about feeling "old."  Part of why she was excited to see me is that at least 2 other classmates of ours took their own lives in the interim--she was happy to see that our semester's strangely high suicide rate didn't also include me.  So much has happened in the decade since, yet still my foolish unconscious insists that Nauvoo was only "a little while ago," or that the plate on my ankle is still some new thing, and not a part of me now.

This is only the beginning: I am now far closer to the decennials of some of my favorite memories of my post-mission 20s than to their initial occurrence.

For in just a few months, it will be the decennial of graduating from my hometown community college (which is particularly sobering given how I'm currently completing the last of my PhD course work).

Also, this coming summer will mark the decennial of my one summer semester at BYU--a trifle scarcely worth noting, save that I made at least a few friendships there that, despite all my other innumerable friendships that forged, flourished, then faded away in the ensuing years, have somehow stayed strong to this day.

Then this coming Fall (when I hope to be passing my comprehensive exams), will be the decennial of my first semester at BYU-Idaho (I was reminded of that when the Church recently announced that Kim Clark, who arrived the same semester as I, would be stepping down as college president after 10 years of "faithful service").

This Fall will also mark the decennial of my one foray into construction--I was paid less to be a roofer that semester than the current Federal minimum wage.  Yet though the pay was inexcusably low, I still, strangely, have the fondest memories of our commute to Island Park--and how one of those drives was when I first fell in love with Ben Fold Fives' The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner--which is also now an old album.

The Decennials will only keep cascading from there.  Fall 2016 (when I should be dissertating) will mark 10 years since I taught English in China (an experience that still pays dividends today, as my survival-Mandarin is all that helps me cope with my Rhetoric classes overwhelmed with Chinese internationals).  That will also mean a Decennial since I giddily skipped down to the Long River while I listened to Rocket Summer's Hello, Good Friend, and a Decennial since my triumphant stroll along the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, Tienanmen Square, the Summer Palace, Tianzhu Shan, JiuHua Shan--and of my encounter with the sublime atop Huang Shan.  All these, too, shall soon be officially, achingly, too long ago.

2017 (when I hope to be defending) will mark the decennial since my graduation from Rexburg; of my double-date to Yellowstone; of my newspaper internship in Guadalajara, Mexico; of the failure of my first real relationship.  Hot on its heels, 2018 will then mark too long since I worked as a substitute teacher, broke and alone; when I jogged a half-marathon alone through the backwoods of Washington; when I was seduced by summer sales; when Kyle (is he still alive??) and I gleefully burned our work-shirts under the Denver full moon; then when I drove triumphant into Salt Lake City, to start grad school at the University of Utah, which kicks off a whole other slew of memories of friends, co-workers, classmates, roommates, professors, first conferences, first publications, hikes, national parks, dates, lovers, various crushes and feeling crushed--

And so on.

I believe I will get a breather from major decennials for a maybe a year there...till rolls the decennial of my MA; then of hunting for my first teaching job, of my first PhD applications, of my first trips to Spain, France, England, London, Italy, Rome...at which point my initial bewildering arrival to Iowa will begin to seem too long ago, as I then approach the decennial of this silly little blogpost (assuming I'll still have a blog then--shouldn't I be on tumblr by now or something?), as I smile at my youthful naivety, as I must then grapple with what it means for things to now be 20 years ago...then 30...40...50...Eternity.

Perhaps there is some innate survival mechanism embedded within these anxious anticipations of coming anniversaries--they maybe are meant to imbue you with a firm resolution that you will be better in the future than you were in the past, so that the anniversary doesn't feel quite so sad.  For example, me realizing that post-PhD graduation 2018 will be a decennial since my broke/lonely post-BA graduation 2008, burns within me a deep and abiding desire to ensure that that anniversary isn't also a repeat.  It also fills me with a determination to ensure that the things I once did are kept good company by the things I will do.  Perhaps all these decennials are a manner by which to push myself into the future, not just wallow in the past.

Perhaps.