Only so much room…

Don’t worry…I am not going to share any more about the trip itself. But I reserve the right to pass along any musings that resulted from it and here is one for today. 

As my friend Janey and I walked along the beach, we covered the past, present and even the future as our 50th class reunion will happen in May. 

F-I-F-T-Y

I can’t even wrap my mind around that one. 

But I digress.

As we reminisced or talked about who has committed to attend the above, ridiculously large number of years, reunion; sometimes we both knew the name and sometimes one of us would have no recollection. 

I mentioned reconnecting with my French teacher a few years ago and she couldn’t remember her very well. Janey had taken Latin. Which some may say is a dead language, but just about every kid who took it ended up as a doctor or lawyer or some other difficult profession. 

They also, or so they would have said back in the halls of learning that we attended, can learn other languages more quickly since all stem from Latin. 

At one point, Janey kind of marveled that we attended the same school in the same small town and have different people we remember. 

We talked about how there were about 175 in our graduating class. We had our connections through class schedules, neighborhoods, extra curricular activities, clubs and churches. 

Depending on what these were, our circles were not completely shared with any one person. 

I have two friends I still connect with who went to my church. Two of us were in French Club, one in Spanish. Neither was in band, but I was in band with Janey my senior year as the sponsor (non band member representative of the school…it’s a southern thing) and so I knew some of the kids but she had done four years with them. 

She was kind of feeling bad she didn’t remember some names I said, but I was totally accepting of the fact that I had no grasp of some she mentioned. This is partly because I am terrible at names, but even as she described them, I had no idea who they were. And I was okay with it. 

I think it is because she grew up from birth in that small town and her parents remained there til they passed. 

I grew up moving from base to base and then town to town. My parents moved away after I graduated and I attended two colleges, moved several times with our own family with Russ as we outgrew houses or circumstances called for a change. 

In every place there have been people to connect with. 

There are friends and acquaintances, coworkers and associates from organizations from every phase and stage of my life, neighbors, people at church and friends of friends. I do not have the band width of mind nor heart to remember fully and completely every single person. 

For someone who loves deeply and seems to have an enormous capacity to remember minutia about some things, I simply cannot store all the data where it can be accessed readily. It is interesting to me and I wonder what makes some memories stick and others slip back into a deep place of archives that we can’t seem to find anymore. 

I have learned as I wander along the path of this journey that I am remembered by some and not by others as well. It is awkward when I am the forgetful one who doesn’t know someone who recognizes me. It is interesting when the reverse occurs and I remember someone who has not kept me in the active files of memory. 

Even within our nuclear family, some stories I remember are not remembered by others and vice versa.  

All the lives who have touched mine. All the lives I have touched. These are part of the journey, whether I can recall the details or not. They have a place in who I am and I have a place in who they are. 

It makes the relationships that have stood the test of time and remain alive when we reconnect even more precious. 

I have been dragging my feet about attending the reunion for several reasons. One is just that so much time has passed, what is the point. I have kept up with the ones I wanted to and have moved on to make room for each season as it has come along. 

But after strolling for a while with my friend and remembering the hippie version of her fifty years ago with her long blonde hair, Dr. Scholl’s sandals and flared jeans; strumming her guitar or playing the piano or studying for some brainiac Latin test, I am thinking there may be some others I would like to see one more time.

And it makes me appreciate the people who have shared the path, for just a short part of the path or for the long haul  <3