Grad School reunion...until this point. It has served me well to keep my view focused and forward but somehow the need to reconnect is now greater than all the scheduling obstacles that created the roadblocks of the bygone days. Ten of my closest college friends were moved by the need as well and we all convened on the oddly familiar terrain of Kentucky horse country by Friday afternoon.Christmas cards created the platform by which we kept up with all the latest developments but the ebbs and flow of life left years, and in all cases at least a decade, between hugs, kisses on the cheeks, and the familiar view of the laugh lines in each face that I knew by heart during the four years that we lived together. Marriages, grad school, and the corners that life carves for us each to turn marked the years that progressed more quickly until the sheer sum of their total did not seem possible. Thus, the awakening early this spring and the unavoidable desire to return to my roots.
The death of Michael Jackson provided me with the soundtrack by which I drove to Kentucky. All radio stations between Atlanta and Lexington it seemed collectively decided to do a weekend memorial to Jackson by playing his music non-stop. Oddly enough, those rare moments when his music was not being played by the stations, it was replaced by the soundtrack of my college years -- Cranberries, Def Leppard, U2, REM... Sounds and smells are some of the most powerful memories, and I already was transported back 15 years before I reached the Kentucky border.
Oh my life is changing everyday,
in every possible way.
And oh, my dreams, it's never quiet as it seems,
never quiet as it seems.
I know I've felt like this before,
but now I'm feeling it eve more,
because it came from you.
And then I open up and see the person falling here is me,
a different way to be.
Ah, la da ah...La... --- Cranberries, "Dream," 1993
Words can't describe the butterflies winging their way through my stomach as I approached the door to A's house where everyone decided to gather Friday afternoon upon their arrival into town. The unknown always brings far more drama in my head than the reality that eventually edges it out. Before I knew it, A's arms swung the door wide and enveloped me into a hug that felt so familiar and new at the same time. Her beautiful home designed to a "T" and three gorgeous boys mirrored every stitch of the amazing woman that I remember - to the point that I considered perhaps they were with her all along during the time I knew her so well and even during the months after graduation in which we lived together before I headed to Georgia for grad school. But oddly, that would somehow be impossible and all those changes were the reflection of 14 years since I last saw her. These same feelings were felt down the line as I reacquainted with every dear friend.
I expected to see the marks that life would inevitably walk across each face and the settling caused by gravity's force as the years take their toll. Instead, I found a fit, vibrant and resilient crew that refused to let life's force take full control - in every single one, an oddity indeed. Focused, as I remember them each to be, - our conversations centered on how each one has chosen to live with intentionality and leave the earth a better place than how he/she found it. Such passion threaded through the day-to-day choices in how each one has chosen to live. One adopting two baby girls from China, after having two boys of her own; another fighting leukemia in one child and then juvenile diabetes in another; one preparing to adopt a sibling group from Ethiopia, adding to her four birth children; one planting a church with her husband and spending years cultivating the soil of the community; another a military doctor caring for returning Iraq and Afghanistan vets; and the list goes on...As I left the small liberal arts college and made my way into the center of my life path 15 years ago, I thought that perhaps my friends and I had all chosen different paths and that over time there would be precious little to connect us. As I have examined my roots carefully over this weekend, I find that there is more that we share than what may draw us apart. Of course, we are very different on paper. That is clear when I consider the weekend and the buzz of its activity that took place under the 100 year old oak trees in the college's semi-circle sprawled in front of the white imposing columns of the administration building. As we lounged on benches pulled together in a circle shaded by green leaves creating a canopy over us, 20+ children ran around our snug little group of all different shapes, colors, and sizes. There were scooters careening down the sidewalk with helmeted heads of varying sizes, jogging buggies stuffed with animal crackers, fruit juices and loads of water to be poured down 10 year old boys' throats sporting grass-stained knees after a scuffle playing soccer as they navigated through the grass that was at times interrupted by roots from the great oaks. Red painted toe-nails poked through high-heeled sandals by the childless one's and flat/athletic Privas strapped across the feet of the baby-carrying mothers.
Life can bring great challenges, but I found that as our faces poke through the leaves to peer out from the heights we have climbed - far from the roots below - we find that we are all the same in so many ways. And, we all want very similar things for ourselves and for each other.In the uncertainty that this world brings with the swaying winds of time, these roots mean everything.
