College Road Trip

Brooke and I celebrated spring break with a girls' getaway. For a couple of years now she has known just where she'd like to go to college. Now that she has almost completed her junior year, we decided to take SNU up on its invitation to visit the campus, meet some professors, and sit in on some classes.

On Monday we detoured a few miles out of the way to spend a few hours with Samantha, who had just earned privileges to leave base in a bus or a taxi. It was so good to see her looking strong and confident and as beautiful as ever.

It was while we were visiting in the mall that I was first hit with a sense of nostalgia. I remembered this place from thirty years before. It was where I did my "serious" shopping when I took my first teaching job.

On Tuesday morning we drove through the town where I had lived and worked for eight years. Intersections and areas of town I used to know like the back of my hand had changed so much they were barely recognizable. A few buildings had changed hands, some were gone, but most were simply dwarfed by new retail establishments that had crowded around them.

The place closest to my heart was the block that held the Christian school and the church where I spent so much of those years. The school had celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary while I lived there, but has been closed for a number of years. It was sad to see it empty and to remember the life it once held. All the windows were boarded up, closed tightly to the light and to the community. Unless one is looking for it as I was, there's barely a hint that a couple of mobile homes used to sit over in the corner of the campus. That anyone ever lived there once upon a time.

I hadn't made plans to see anyone, but I did run into a couple of people I knew. I found myself studying their faces, trying to recognize features of the people I remembered. In all the ways that matter, they were the same. I told Brooke stories about people and places from my past as we made the final leg of our trip. She even acted interested. (Smile!)

We stopped for lunch at Grandy's across from the SNU campus before heading to our appointment. There was a dear little lady who must have been close to eighty years old refilling glasses of sweet tea in the dining room. I told Brooke she must have been a pastor's wife who didn't save enough for retirement and who sent her children to SNU!

The campus was beautiful, almost idyllic, and Jennifer, the admissions officer, gave us the VIP tour. I loved watching Brooke interact with the faculty and staff. She seemed so poised and grown-up. Still, I can't imagine letting her go off on her own as my parents allowed me to do when I was just a few months older than she is now. More than ever it seems so important to make the most of every day she has left at home.

On Wednesday my old friend Norma was able to break away from her family and join us for some girlfriend time. For four of my eight years in Oklahoma, she and I had been housemates. It had been way too long since we'd been in touch with one another, but she is the kind of friend that you can always pick up the relationship exactly where you left off. It was so good to laugh with her again. We spent the day just catching up. Our conversation was peppered with "What ever happened to...?" and "Do you ever hear from ...?" The belly laughs usually came after "Do you remember..." and were often followed by one of us saying, "I had forgotten all about that!" Between the two of us, we reconstructed enough nonsense to convince Brooke we were totally crazy.

"Doesn't it seem," we asked each other, "that we should still be in our thirties, or maybe even our twenties?"

Where have all the years gone? Who would have known they'd pass so quickly?

"Sunrise, sunset. Sunrise, sunset.
Swifty fly the days.
Seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers,
Blossoming even as we gaze.
Sunrise, sunset. Sunrise, sunset.
Swiftly fly the years.
One season following another,
Laden with happiness and tears."