Past Present Future

Stepping out of the shower, I thought carefully about what clothes I'd wear. After all, this was my first day at school and I wanted to make the right impression: for me, that means casual, yet put-together.

But I wasn't the student this time. I am the parent of a ninth-grader, and this was my first parent night at the high school. There will be many more school visits in the coming years, but the first anything is always a more acute experience.

(Of course, I got to drive this time. My last "first time" at high school, I was just fourteen and had to ride the bus...)

I was a little excited to be going to high school, this time as always: as a little girl, even as a teenager, and especially when I took that college course a couple of years ago. It's that anticipation of "what could be" and "what I'll be" along with, in my case, geeky love of learning stuff and taking notes.

So there I was, a parent among a sea of them, searching for my son's classrooms, navigating the crowded halls, balancing a look of confident indifference with eagerness to share a class with friends. (Aside: who thought it was logical to place room 115 not in between 114 and 116, but rather around the corner and 50 feet down the hall?! I really did look like a lost freshman...)

And as I completed abbreviated versions of all my son's classes, I realized that memories and hopes, of myself and for him, had been commingling all evening. Not only was I there, in my son's high school, thinking of how he will grow and change during the next four years and how daunting this building must have seemed on his first day. But I was also thinking back to my own high school days, which many of my classmates will be celebrating this weekend at our 25th reunion.

I thought back to my own high school years. Those awkward, exciting, hormonal, future-defining years. Personally, they weren't the highlight of my life. Eh, I was shy, lacked confidence, lacked curves (yeah, for some of us, those come later...). I just didn't know my style yet, didn't know I had something to say, didn't know it's okay to be smart and interesting but a little bit ditsy all rolled into one, didn't know I was interesting, didn't know my passions, didn't know how to laugh at myself, didn't know there was the real me hidden inside my own good-girl shell, didn't know how to embrace the body I had, didn't know to pluck my eyebrows.

So, part of me would like to go to the reunion. See old classmates and friends through the eyes of an older, wiser, more relaxed, self-confident woman. 

But this older, wiser, relaxed, confident woman is also the mother of three teens. They have busy lives and lots of weekend plans, so I'm skipping the drive to Columbus. I can wait five years till the next.

And in five years, I'll have a college sophomore and two high school seniors. Five years may seem like forever to the kids, but I know better.