While I realize that this is going to date me, and you will all now know that I am far, far older than I look, I have decided to tell you that my 20 year high school reunion was last weekend. Where on earth does time go?
I purposely vanished from the face of the earth after high school graduation. I left my hometown and kept in contact with pretty much no one. As my reunion was approaching I started thinking about all my "old" friends. All of my curiosity seemed to focus on all the kids I went to elementary school with. There were many of us that spent 7 years together at Wood Gormeley Elementary School. Slowly I started getting in touch with classmates via Facebook and Classmates.com.
At first it was a bit intimidating. I worried that people wouldn't even remember me. That or they would think it was freakishly strange that I still think about 5th grade. That was not the case AT ALL. Over the past couple weeks it has been a flurry of re-connecting with old friends. I spoke to one high school friend on the phone for a couple hours and was so sad to hear that both of her parents had passed away. I spent countless hours at their home and ached to hear they were gone. I really wanted to let them know that "wild Yo" or "squirrel", as her dad called me, turned out OK.
I chatted online with my best friend from 3rd and 4th grade. I hadn't spoken to her since we were about 11 years old and yet there was this comfortable knowing in our conversation. She told me her mom had a brain tumor. A couple of days ago she sent me an email that her mom had passed away the day before. A flood of memories came back - the Woody Allen poster in their home and my first experience playing dreidel. I spent many a night sleeping in tents with them one summer as they built their dream home in the mountains. They gave me strict instructions to only poop in the outhouse - no peeing in there. I peed in there and they politely rehashed the rules for me. "Bill(her stepfather) just mentioned you the other day", Sarah said when I first contacted her. Wow.
Another grade-school friend has spent 17 years in the military and he competes in ballroom dancing competitions! He sent me videos of him dancing and I sent him pictures of me and my boys. "You still have that same cute smile you had as a little girl!" he wrote me. One high school friend left his job at Microsoft to be a full-time freelance artist. I hope to include some of his amazing paintings of fruits and veggies on my website and in my office. Another friend is an architect and another a dentist with a daughter Kyle's age. She and I have emailed back and forth sharing our thoughts on balancing our lives as mommies and as professionals. My first boyfriend (he was in first grade and I was in second)wrote me and told me he has been living in the Middle East. He has lived in Costa Rica and Japan and traveled to who knows where. He picked right up making funny references to things that would only mean something to me.
I especially like talking to the elementary school boys. Both "Tommy A" and "Tommy T" have beautiful kids. Thanks to computer technology I was able to see pictures of their families. There they were, these 'kids' I still feel that I know so well, smiling with that exact same 7 year old smile and now it was reflected in their offspring. I loved seeing pictures of Tommy T's parents with their grandchild. I can close my eyes and see them in the audience during countless school performances.
Childhood, you hope, is a time of joy and comfort. I feel like a young child - safe and confident and comfortable and loved - when I talk to these old friends. There is this sweet, innoncence in our dialogue and I love it.
A couple weeks back Todd, Eric and I were watching Kyle's first soccer game. Up walked a childhood friend of Todd's. Ryan has ended up living in Reno as well and he was there watching his 4(!!!!) kids play soccer. Todd remembers playing soccer with Ryan as a kid. As I downloaded the above picture of Kyle and his teamates I thought, "what a full-circle moment".
