The Past…..

Sometimes the past comes knocking on the door when you least expect it. A memory, a letter, a telephone call….an email.

Tonight I got an unexpected email from a high school friend. We were really close for most of our high school years, we were in the same home room.  And we saw each other a few times during college vacations and perhaps once or twice after we were each married and starting independent lives. But I don't think I've seen this high school buddy for more than forty years. Annual Christmas cards were our only connection.

Tonight there was a sudden email saying she and her husband were headed to Milwaukee for a wedding - would we be free to meet for dinner? Sadly, the timing didn't work for us…..but her email sent my mind flying "backwards" to the years spent in high school. For many reasons, those years were  not the happiest for me.

And then, later in the evening I was reading in bed. Engrossed in Alice Hoffman's novel The Museum of Extraordinary Things. I've enjoyed other work by this author and find this novel very intriguing. Page 139 brought me up short. Here a few sentences spoke to me: " Hochman had been right, the past was what we carried with us, threaded to the future, and we decided whether to keep it close or let it go. Fate was both what we were given and what we made for ourselves."

The past….sometimes it comes and smacks you in the today….and makes you think about your tomorrows. Carry the memories and sadnesses….or let them go.

I guess I'm still a work in progress. That's sort of encouraging….to think that we never stop changing, growing, healing.