Past, present and future

On my birthday just passed, I received a wonderful present: an email from my next door neighbor, my first friend, the one I played with from birth until our paths separated. We had both been trying to find each other for a few years. I found her name on Classmates.com but when I decided to join in order to contact her, she had taken her name off the site. Then my high school had a 50th year reunion in November. I thought of going, wanted to, but the logistics were too complicated. So reconnecting has been exciting, catching up on so many years.

I think perhaps the last time I saw Carol was at the Memorial service for my mother, forty years ago. Tamar was four and Aaron wasn’t yet. Carol was visibly upset by my mother’s premature death. That was very moving to me. (It took me ten years to make peace with it myself as my mother and I didn’t have an easy relationship.) Carol and I had experienced death as teenagers. Her brother Jimmy, two years older than us, died when he was eighteen. In the same month her grandmother died and my uncle Harold, the one I felt so close to, died. It was a hard January. After that I think I closed down. I broke off with my very good boyfriend and turned inward. Where I tend to go often under stress.

Carol and I used to play with our dolls, one named Sheila, the other Phoebe. I think Carol’s was Phoebe, but I am not sure. We played in her sandbox in our dress-up clothes, played on the monkey-bars and swings in my yard, made up fantastic games together enjoyed many sleep-overs. As we got older, the games turned to baseball, basketball, volleyball, badminton (in her yard) and then poker and dances. All the neighborhood kids would gather at her house for games. She was a cheerleader at school, always friendly. My mother really liked her, wanted me to be more like her, which didn’t help me as we grew up. But that is all in the past and the present feels good.

Carol sent me the reunion book. As I read it, the images of high school become vivid. The past is walking in front of me, saying hello again. And again. It’s fascinating to see where people have gone, where they are, who they are with, how their lives have expanded, contracted, changed. High school (school in general) was never a happy place for me. It was a mixed bag. I found classes boring, the social stuff strange. I never felt completely comfortable. (And now I’m teaching; very ironic.)

At the dance class last weekend, I was again reminded of high school. It had been that long since I had danced that close. In itself, dancing close led to much more friendliness between dancers, even if we weren’t “in love.” It was very nice. It’s funny (strange) how the past keeps coming up in my life lately. Making itself present in ways that remind me of where I have been and how I have been traveling.

(I’ve have been trying to scan in some wonderful photos my dad took of Carol and me when we were children, but having upgraded my system, I can’t seem to make the scanner function. Yet. Will keep working on it. It will probably take a phone call to Aaron! So stay posted. . . )

Posted by leya at January 22, 2006 09:45 AM