Back to the Present in the Future

So, here's the thing I've learned through blogging for the past year: sometimes it is the most random and seemingly unimportant moment that takes on the most meaning.

There is a scene in Thornton Wilder's Our Town where Emily, who has died, asks to go back to relive a day. She is cautioned to not choose a very special day, because everything becomes so much more special when it's gone. She chooses a birthday -- one she feels is relatively insignificant -- but only makes it through part of the day before she decides that she has to leave. The beauty in all of the small moments is too much for her to bear.

There is a little of that in the movie The Time Traveler's Wife, which Kelly and I saw this week. (ha! You'd thought I'd forgotten it was Movie Monday, hadn't you!?) It's a movie with an obvious gimmick (the dude time travels and... eventually... gets married... all with really good hair), but what makes it powerful are the small moments that connect the people. The movie, really, isn't about time travel. Or even about the time traveler. It's about the relationships and the shared moments that the time traveler shares with the people in his life -- for better or worse.

I went into the movie with pretty low expectations. I wanted it to be good, but I wasn't sure it was going to be able to pull it out. But it did. And I found myself pulling for the characters and the day-to-dayness that they longed for.

Somehow, this is the same day-to-day life that Our Town's Emily seems to want as she searches her past in Grover's Corners. And... in some very small way... I think it's what I've spent the past year looking for in this blog.

I love writing about the big events -- the travel, the food, the movies, the parties -- but I enjoy re-reading the stories of the smaller happenings. I like prattling on about the mundane things in life and, hopefully, making them less mundane by doing so.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to do the Proustian thing and spend chapter upon chapter writing about a biscuit, but I'm going to keep stumbling along. Hopefully bumping into a good topic or two along the way, all while finding more movies and more food and maybe even more friends (I've actually made friends via this blog this year -- How cool is that?!). I'm sure there will be tales of gardening and technology and weather and -- hopefully -- even a John Barrowman sighting or two.

Please come along. (And feel free to comment!) I love the company.

Oh. And I give Time Traveler's Wife an A-. I got a lot more than I expected out of it, but there were a few loose ends that even weaving through time didn't tie up.