the tonight show

i never intended to post leno's gatorade joke the other night. extreme tire caused me to hit publish rather than save, and i let it be. really i was just writing it down to remember and share with vern when he returned from the shower. thankfully i did not include all the jaywalking questions i and my 4-year degree never seem to know either. for that, too, i shall blame extreme tire. when vern asked 10 minutes later what on earth i did not know, i couldn't recall what i could not answer. so it is plausible excuse, no?

i watched carson's last show from a hotel room in des moines. state track. i can hardly conjure up a thing about it, but then i can't remember much of that particular meet either. was that the year meg introduced me to subway? when it rained? when i snapped the shot of bianca not-smiling in the group photo with her chicken drum? when jorgy pointed out all the scum floating in the bottom of pool hot tubs? no extreme tire factoring in here. age. if not for pictures all of high school would in my memory be compressed to one year.

i watched leno's last show as we cleaned for company's arrival. i don't know how much i'll remember in 17 years. of the show or my brother and his wife's visit. this was the sunny weekend that we took blimpie's to the lake. without vern because all the farmers were working hard before it rained. that carl gave owen his first: bites of anything, ice cream ala cone and cool whip ala spray glob in hand; swim just in time before caleb's 3-6m trunks were too teeny. laps and splashes in the pool, including a dunk of the 'they're trim, not leak-proof' swim diaper in the hotel's hot tub. details bright and shiny now will undoubtedly be blended in with the rest.


i may only vaguely recall the end of this tonight show era, how jay reminded everyone it was just a tv show. how he said he contemplated the media questions about what he felt his legacy would be and spoke of the unions created within the tonight show crew. then pulled back the curtain to show the mass of children born to them within their tenure. 69? 68? see. already the facts slipping, but not jay's emotion or the little one running around in front.

i may have cried. slightly. extreme tire, age and hormones.


if only brett could have handed the ball over so admirably - this thought my original intended tie-in from the gatorade joke. having said that, i realize jay will be back in the fall. and had nbc not worked with him, he may well have pulled a brett letterman and gone purple and gold. but at least he didn't fake retire just to switch sides, and can take his whole team with him. ha. there's the difference.

tonight we watched conan. like we normally watch any late-night show which is to say with 1/2 an ear or eye. i nudged vern awake to catch pearl jam. i have yet to understand why he loves that band. i tried to tune out my 1/2 ear and dunked my sorrow, confirming this morning i had indeed somehow deleted caleb in his 4-year-old-mmmmmint-chip-cold-stone-cake-surprise-party-glow et al, in all the happy birthday shots at iheartfaces. what extreme timing.

i did not cry. having already exhausted many an anguished tear - hoping they might be on the lost memory card, but fearing (correctly) they were not - for the past 5 months, 17 days. my only consolation is the guarantee that none of my hard-flash shots would have been any more iheartface saturday-worthy than the rest of our hard-flash birthday shots.


i don't know that i've ever seen a picture of grandpa blowing out the fire created when my aunt lit all his hard-earned candles atop the barn-themed cake. i keep thinking there is one as i remember the scene so vividly. age has yet to delete it. no singular moment stands up and waves within my brain, but there is a warm glow from where all those nights watching carson with grandpa have blurred together. i hope the same holds true for caleb's memory of his mmmmmmint chip cake and john deere tall candles. and how much his family loved and celebrated him each and every birthday.

i'm so fearful of tire, age or a big bad blow to the head taking away our moments that i try to archive it all on film. our legacy. the moments. not the quality pictures of. those are only as back-up. so when i hand the ball over it will be fully inflated. because blurred warm glows in one's memory can be jostled into something wholly different with big blows to the head. because now all i have to prove a moment actually existed is the picture mom took.


before pictures there was this thing called paper and pen. i tend to forget that in my mad dash of digital snap happy. that sometimes pictures do not speak a thousand words. sometimes a short note from your mom about your surprise birthday when you were four says more. that jay's point was not the mass of kids all in one shot, but that when each child asked how his or her parents met, they would reply "at the tonight show with jay..."