I hope that one day I'll grow up.
Time has a way of sneaking up on you
and then racing passed
leaving you in the proverbial
"but it seemed like it was just yesterday"
dust.
I don't feel like a grown-up,
yet in a year I will face
my ten year high school reunion
and
my five year since-I-graduated-from-college anniversary.
My older-than-me friends,
please
refrain from laughing
as I already understand and have been told
this will only get worse as I continue to age.
My younger-than-me friends,
please
refrain from saying things like
"but you've been getting to your age so slowly
....
how can you NOT feel that old?"
Trust me,
when you're ten year high school reunion comes,
you won't
feel
like it's been ten years either.
So,
I visited my high school
for the first time
since I graduated almost ten years ago.
A boy in my church is working on an Eagle Scout project
(patching the pencil and pen holes
gauged into the walls
by bored students
learning about geography, politics, and American history
and
painting the walls anew)
and my husband and I offered to come and help.
You cannot imagine
how ridiculous
I felt
as we drove toward
my old school.
My heart
was pounding like
I was going back for the first day of school
and
I had forgotten
my schedule,
locker number,
and combo...
oh yeah,
and that huge list of books I was supposed to read over the summer?
Didn't read a single one.
The moment we pulled into the parking lot
a flood
of memories
welled up like an overflowing toilet.
Mostly painful.
Mostly sticky.
Mostly angry.
We walked inside.
I remembered walking down those halls
hoping
there was more than this;
more than cliques,
more than feeling left out,
more than being popular,
more than having rich parents or poor parents,
more than being skinny or fat,
more than acting a certain way so people would accept you,
more than wondering if you were friends with the "right people",
more than passing tests and writing pointless papers,
more than being cool or nerdy,
more than "sucking in" when a cute boy walked by,
more than walking the "fine line" between getting grades that were "too good" and getting grades good enough for the college you wanted to attend,
more than knowing what music, cars, or hobbies your boyfriend liked,
more than a boy telling you that you're pretty or liking your personality,
more than being looked at or noticed by someone who never had before,
more than feeling like no one liked you and no one every really had,
more than...
high school.
Eventually, good memories squirmed their way in,
coming along side the bad ones.
A strange marbled mixture of crass detriment and moments of light
resulted, and then
a strong feeling came over me,
one I have felt feebly for mere moments
when
I watch the sun set behind the glorious mountains,
or when
I look down from a difficult hike at an amazingly beautiful witness of God's creations.
The feeling:
it comes so often in our youth,
but we don't recognize it,
it reveals itself when we learn something we can do to improve someone or something (especially ourselves), but we don't see it,
it's fleeting breath whispers to us when we know we've done something correct,
yet we often refuse to listen.
Potential.
How strange it is
to relive a moment
when you feel something and wonder if it's true
and then
the next moment
recall the memories that confirm it.
Like putting your hands in a bucket of honey,
life is sticky.
You can't avoid getting that
gooey, viscous syrup on your skin.
You're born into it.
The stages of life you experience are buckets of honey.
And I've found that even as time pulls you further away from one bucket,
you always get involved in dipping your hands in other buckets,
and the strings from a past bucket,
do not sever.
You string it right along with you.
That's good.
But I haven't realized until now
that I still have sticky strings clinging to my
"high school bucket of honey";
memories and experiences that have taught me
and that I may never forget,
although some I wish I could.
My moment of discovering one particular honey string,
connecting me all the way back to that point in high school,
has given me a great push.
I have potential.
Not just in this life.
There are greater things on the horizon,
no matter how far that horizon may be.
I don't expect money.
I don't expect fame.
I don't expect popularity.
But I expect something good.
And good usually comes in little buckets of honey.
