Greatest Hits
Thursday, July 05, 2007
I just got a final copy of POSTCARDS – fresh from the printer. Robin brought it to my job today – we went to Panera and cracked it open. Seeing my name on the spine, flipping through all of the beautiful pages - I think this makes today an official Greatest Hit.
It got me wondering what my other Greatest Hits are. It’s tough – there are moments of relief, like when you find out a family member made it through a complicated surgery or something you were worrying about, something that could really ruin your life, turned out ok. But those can’t really be greatest hits – there’s just too much sadness and stress wrapped up with them. Greatest Hits have to be the kinds of memories that would bring about the same feeling of euphoria regardless of the situation you’re in – regardless of what’s going on in your life at the moment. A Greatest Hit is something that gets you to the peak of your happiness – the upper limit – that feeling that you only get several times in a lifetime and you don’t think you’ll ever reach it again.
So, some of my Greatest Hits, in no particular order…
1) Since it’s the most recent one, I have to go with Robin and me getting engaged. Honestly, though, it wasn’t the actual proposal that falls under Greatest Hits. I was too nervous, I messed it up some, and I just wasn’t in the zone – I was bumbling, if you will. No, the Greatest Hit came afterwards, when Robin and I were sitting at the base of the Rialto Bridge, drinking carafe-after-carafe of wine, calling our relatives, kissing like mad, and she was listening to me tell her the stories. How I got the ring. How I asked her father if I can marry her. How I, essentially, told everyone I know that I was going to propose. That was a great moment – one of the happiest moments of my life.
2) Finding out I was going to be a big-brother is easily another one. I wanted a sibling for my first eleven years on this planet and I’ll never forget when my parents told me I was going to have one. I was at my Grandma’s house in Red Hook. My cousins and I were playing in one of those plastic kid pools in the backyard. My parents call me into Grandma’s hallway and tell me my mom is having a baby. I run back into the yard and tell all my cousins and we all look into the window and see my aunts and uncles hugging my mom and dad – everyone crying. It was such a great moment – one of my best childhood memories.
3) My parents have always done so much for me. Too much, at times. And it seems like my college graduation dinner was the culmination of it all – the last hurrah. I wasn’t a kid anymore; I was on my own after this one dinner. I moved to DC less than a week after that dinner following a couple of uneventful days back in New York. But that dinner…
My whole family was there. All my aunts and uncles, my grandparents, and Robin’s parents. It was a great little Italian place in the North End. Everyone was eating the food and drinking the wine. We had so much fun. The bill came out and my father went to pay for it and came back five minutes later with an apron on and started cleaning up the table. It was, without a doubt, the perfect joke. But it also symbolized something more, in a way – the sacrifice my parents made for me throughout the years. Whenever I think about the scene, I get a bit choked up. It was such an innocent gesture from my dad – there was likely no subtext there – to him, it was just funny. But, to me…it was the last moment before being sent out into the world.
4) Walking into Random House’s lobby for the first time – God, what a thrill. You walk into this lobby and you have two bookcases on each side of you reaching to the ceiling. Books like Catcher in the Rye and Ulysses. I had to take a minute to compose myself before checking in at the desk – it was, without a doubt, the culmination of every childhood dream I ever had. Getting my offer, signing the contract, getting the galleys, my first good review…those experiences didn’t even measure up to the feeling I got when I walked into that building.
I’m sure there are more; it’s just difficult for me to put them up there with the one’s I already talked about.
It got me wondering what my other Greatest Hits are. It’s tough – there are moments of relief, like when you find out a family member made it through a complicated surgery or something you were worrying about, something that could really ruin your life, turned out ok. But those can’t really be greatest hits – there’s just too much sadness and stress wrapped up with them. Greatest Hits have to be the kinds of memories that would bring about the same feeling of euphoria regardless of the situation you’re in – regardless of what’s going on in your life at the moment. A Greatest Hit is something that gets you to the peak of your happiness – the upper limit – that feeling that you only get several times in a lifetime and you don’t think you’ll ever reach it again.
So, some of my Greatest Hits, in no particular order…
1) Since it’s the most recent one, I have to go with Robin and me getting engaged. Honestly, though, it wasn’t the actual proposal that falls under Greatest Hits. I was too nervous, I messed it up some, and I just wasn’t in the zone – I was bumbling, if you will. No, the Greatest Hit came afterwards, when Robin and I were sitting at the base of the Rialto Bridge, drinking carafe-after-carafe of wine, calling our relatives, kissing like mad, and she was listening to me tell her the stories. How I got the ring. How I asked her father if I can marry her. How I, essentially, told everyone I know that I was going to propose. That was a great moment – one of the happiest moments of my life.
2) Finding out I was going to be a big-brother is easily another one. I wanted a sibling for my first eleven years on this planet and I’ll never forget when my parents told me I was going to have one. I was at my Grandma’s house in Red Hook. My cousins and I were playing in one of those plastic kid pools in the backyard. My parents call me into Grandma’s hallway and tell me my mom is having a baby. I run back into the yard and tell all my cousins and we all look into the window and see my aunts and uncles hugging my mom and dad – everyone crying. It was such a great moment – one of my best childhood memories.
3) My parents have always done so much for me. Too much, at times. And it seems like my college graduation dinner was the culmination of it all – the last hurrah. I wasn’t a kid anymore; I was on my own after this one dinner. I moved to DC less than a week after that dinner following a couple of uneventful days back in New York. But that dinner…
My whole family was there. All my aunts and uncles, my grandparents, and Robin’s parents. It was a great little Italian place in the North End. Everyone was eating the food and drinking the wine. We had so much fun. The bill came out and my father went to pay for it and came back five minutes later with an apron on and started cleaning up the table. It was, without a doubt, the perfect joke. But it also symbolized something more, in a way – the sacrifice my parents made for me throughout the years. Whenever I think about the scene, I get a bit choked up. It was such an innocent gesture from my dad – there was likely no subtext there – to him, it was just funny. But, to me…it was the last moment before being sent out into the world.
4) Walking into Random House’s lobby for the first time – God, what a thrill. You walk into this lobby and you have two bookcases on each side of you reaching to the ceiling. Books like Catcher in the Rye and Ulysses. I had to take a minute to compose myself before checking in at the desk – it was, without a doubt, the culmination of every childhood dream I ever had. Getting my offer, signing the contract, getting the galleys, my first good review…those experiences didn’t even measure up to the feeling I got when I walked into that building.
I’m sure there are more; it’s just difficult for me to put them up there with the one’s I already talked about.
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posted by Jason at
9:59 AM
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