My First Year as a Mother

While the baby naps, I’ve pulled out his little lime green tinsel tree and am decorating it. There are a whole mess of glittery plastic balls,  each with a tiny silver thread with which to hang it. I notice that several loose threads lay on the bottom of the box – a sure sign that not all of the ornaments were strung up and hung last year. It’s no wonder, of course, considering I decorated the tree laying down in a hospital bed, as I waited to get wheeled in to the OR for my c-section. I remember how my hands shook as I tried to tie the tiny knots.

Now here I am, nearly a year later, thinking ahead to this Christmas with my son, and thinking about a friend who is about to embark on the same journey. I’ve tried to be supportive but not know-it-all-y, honest without terrifying her. But mostly I just want to cry thinking about all that is about to change for her, as soon as she meets that little miraculous person.

I am so glad I had a whole year to think about this before putting my thoughts down in writing. If my friend had had her baby three months after I had mine, I would have told her a different story. At six months, too. Now, with a year under my belt (such a short time in the grand scheme of things!) my words will be tempered, softer, and probably even wistful as I try to explain what it was like for me.

First of all, I would like to admit that a woman, nearly forty years old,  with a fair amount of confidence in herself and her abilities,  was brought to her knees by a boy barely weighing eight pounds. I had no idea the enormity of the love. The weight of it. Nor the fact that it is so intense as to at times feel nearly unbearable.

In my massive amount of preparation for becoming a mother, I really didn’t think about this aspect of it – this love like no other. I felt it the moment I saw his little red face, his deep eyes locking on mine, each of us already knowing the other. Because of the surgery, the nurses took him away for me, just for a few moments, as I lay on the operating table. But an ache burned the back of my throat and I called to him, my voice hoarse and small, feeling acutely the first separation we’d had from each other in our ten month relationship. I imagined what a terrifying shock the masked faces, bright lights, and sounds of the various machines must have been for the tiny baby who had only known the dark warmth of my womb until a few moments previous. But my voice he would know well. Soon, though not soon enough, they brought him to me, adjusting my hospital gown to create a pocket in which to put him next to my skin. His snot mingled with my tears. His little hands grasped for me, and I covered him with the first of the millions of kisses he’ll get from me. Immediately, all I wanted was everything for my son. Immediately, and probably for the rest of my life, I could not stop myself from imagining all of the ways I won’t be able to protect him from the ills of the world.

I did not feel this way before I saw him.  When I was told that without IVF a baby would be impossible, I was all too ready to accept a life without a child, because in truth I was scared to death of parenthood. If my body wasn’t able to make a baby, then forcing it was a bad idea, I wagered, and I knew I could still live a happy life without a child. My husband wanted a baby almost more than anything. Me? I could not wrap my mind around what it would be like, other than to think it would be very, very hard, and I wasn’t at all sure I would be any good at it. I had had too long to think about it, and had become accustomed to a certain life that worked well without kids. I pooh-poohed John’s conviction. All I could think was “he has no idea what it’s like to be a parent, so he doesn’t even know what it is he wants.” Until one day when it dawned on me that, although I focused on the negative things about pregnancy, birth, and child rearing that I had heard, I also hadn’t the foggiest idea what I was or wasn’t missing. I was just scared to take the leap of faith that John was ready for – waiting on the precipice with outstretched hand. That epiphany is what I swear led to the surprise plus I got on a pregnancy test. We tried for nearly three years. We had stopped actively trying, and I had stopped actively fighting it, and then there it was. I was thrilled, but still terrified, and read, listened, and tried to figure out just the right formula for being good at this mothering thing.

But then he arrived, and pretty much all that I thought I knew went straight out the window. Everyone else’s tales became irrelevant. The fogginess surrounding what I thought parenthood would be like dissipated and my son, Ronin James, came into focus. I realized my folly at trying to plan ahead for how I would do anything before I met the actual person at the center of it all. Now I think it’s just mean for advice-givers to make expectant parents believe that there is one right way to do anything. Babies are just tiny people. They come in all sorts of sizes, shapes, and temperments. We muddled our way through the beginning. We are very, very lucky to have a kid with an overall even temperment – given to fits of laughter, and ready to go with the flow at a moments notice. But even still, there are so many ups and downs, some really tough spots in the first year, and I’m guessing in all the years that follow.

Loving a person with your entire being has not been all fun and games. It can be like directly looking at the blazing sun after so much rain. Just. too. much. The worrying doesn’t seem to end. The desire to respond to every one of his needs myself (because who can do it better than me?) is not only unhealthy but really impossible. I often repeated a phrase in my head during the long and ardurous afternoons, middle of the nights, early mornings I spent with the baby in his first couple of months. “All Joy and No Fun.” It was the title of a  New York Times magazine article I had read once, during the time that I was simultaneously trying to get pregnant and terrified at the prospect. It points to the many studies that show people with children are more likely to be unhappy than their kid-free counterparts. One of the reasons, the author muses, might be because of the unrealistic expectations people have that they will be happier once the children come. We were definitely happy with our life before. And we are definitely happy now, and so grateful for our third wheel, but if you go into this thinking that those happinesses will be the same, you’re in for a real shock. It was a great life – we had a great run at being selfish without any real repercussions – but I would not trade this new, sometimes maddenly slow, sometimes manically chaotic life for all the tea in China. For real, I wouldn’t. And still. There is still that no fun part in raising children. Knowing that in advance was probably a little helpful, but it still didn’t make the 4am feedings any easier.

On the other end of the spectrum – there have been many, many really fun parts to this year. Many moments of being utterly amazed. There is so much joy to be had if you are willing to let go – let go of your need for a clean house, let go of your propensity to overbook your day. My finest hours as a mother always come when I stay present. It’s not as easy as I just made it sound. Just be right there, in those tiny moments when the baby is awestruck by the way the grass feels on his bare toes or that you can hit a switch and a light comes on, or goes off. When you’re not worried about what your going to conjure up for dinner, or obsessing over your weedy garden, these moments can make you shake your head at your luck. How did I get this wonderful kid? Those are great moments. And there are lots if you let yourself notice them. Really.

In the time it took me to write this, my friend went from about to have a baby, to holding a son of her own in her arms. Like I said before, I am not an advice-giver, only offering what worked for me with the understanding that when you’re in the trenches, you have got to do what works for you.  All I’ve got are the tools that either helped me, or the ones I wish I had. Mostly, I’ll just divulge those things when asked. I just have three short things to share, with anyone who really cares what I think.

1. Take parenting advice with a grain of salt. Especially from people who make such outrageous claims as “my baby has slept through the night since birth,” or “my child has all of her teeth but somehow I never even noticed that she was teething.” Some people lie, but most are so sleep deprived as to have no recollection of large swaths of time. I have a friend who dreamt that someone she knew got a sex change operation and believed, for a year and a half, that it actually happened in real life (it did not).

2. Also, forgive yourself. Forgive yourself for making mistakes. For taking your frustrations out on your significant other (always a better target than your baby). For not “enjoying every moment,” as oft instructed. For breaking promises to friends because, for a while at least, you may find it shocking how little else you can accomplish outside of taking care of your child.

3. Remind yourself of what a momunmental task you’ve undertaken and look often at that baby and marvel at the ways in which you are helping to shape him into the amazing person he is destined to be.

That’s it for now. Let’s revisit this conversation in 12 years.

It was a short year in which I went from a terrified mother-to-be to feeling quite ambivalent about the end of my son’s babyhood. I think back to those early days, weeks, months of getting the hang of things only to have them change. Of hoping we were handling this or that situation right. The first three months were a hard adjustment, I won’t lie – the next three were challenging, too. And then I blinked and found us here, with this big boy wobbling his way toward toddlerdom at breakneck speed. He walks – a little. He talks – A LOT. He sings. He gets jokes. He wants everyone he sees to be his friend and offers a wide smile as proof. He makes animal noises and has favorite books and songs. I sometimes find myself staring open-mouthed, unbelieving that this beautiful little boy is my son. That I almost missed the boat on this. That someday he’ll be all grown up and I’ll squint to see if I can still find my sweet, blue eyed baby inside that man. He makes me want to be better than I can be, just so I can attempt to be the kind of mother he deserves.

The little tinsel tree is up. It looked so much better this year when I saw it through his little sparkling, amazed eyes.

 

9-11-01

I went through the regular rituals this year – watching old coverage of the planes hitting the towers, listening to survivor tales, reliving it as if it were yesterday. It came at a time when my own life was crumbling down around me, when I thought things couldn’t get worse. I was safe on Sept. 11th, but watched in horror as so many were not. I will never forget how it felt then, and the other day, rocking my baby to sleep, I let my mind go back to it. Here is how I remember 9-11.

 

I was safe inside the glossy, brightly painted cinderblock walls.
A glimpse of shockingly blue sky through the hallway window.
A strange announcement over the PA:
Stop what you are doing.
Read the email.
Bolded, capitalized.
THEY ARE GONE.
Whole buildings.
The people.

Lost to dust and twisted metal
Chaos in slow motion.
Absorption takes time.
Running for the phone.
Busy signals.
Disbelief.
Days and weeks and months of chaos in slow motion.
Absorption takes time.
A downtown turned ghost town.
A town filled with ghosts.
Riding the train with firemen.
Police.
All wearing the same shocked expression.
They wanted to talk then, not like now.
They still needed to speak what they saw, to hear what it sounded like.
To know if it was real.
The flyers stuck to chain link fences.
Have you seen her?
Do you know what happened to him?
My sister, father, my son?
They held tight in whipping winds, in rain.
Clinging to the fences with threads of hope.
For months, hoping.
The unfathomable truth held at bay.
Recovery turned to clean up all too fast.
Not yet, not yet, not yet.

They are still in there.

 

On the Side of Love

One of the perks of having a baby is that I have the opportunity to enjoy quiet early morning strolls more than I used to. That is a looking-on-the-bright-side kind of a statement, but it is also true. One such morning recently, I packed up my little pal and headed for our neighborhood park. He fell asleep easily, and I breathed in the quiet summer morning. There was not another soul in sight except an elderly woman, wearing a hat obviously made for church, crossing the road. So old-timey, so cute to see her toddle across the road heading for towards the bus stop with a straw bag teeming with books and papers. I smiled at her, and said good morning. She commented on how nice it was that I was out with my baby on a Sunday morning, peering into the stroller where my son was peacefully, thankfully, finally asleep. She pulled a coloring sheet out of her bag, commenting it was the focus of her Sunday school lesson that maybe I would like to share with my baby or other children I might have if I wasn’t planning on taking them to church today. I just smiled politely, but saw that this offering was only the tip of her proselytizing iceberg.

“You know, Obama made a mistake,” she said, with a smile that told me she was barely containing a lethal amount of anger beneath it. She pulled out a notebook from her bag, and fumbled for a pair of reading glasses that hung from a chain around her neck. Oh, I thought. Now I know what’s coming.

“Here is what he said,” she began, apparently unaware or unconcerned that I looked as though I desperately wanted to get away from her and continue on my quest for a blissful naptime walk. “‘I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.’ But you see, he is WRONG,” she emphasized. I did not bother to say that his personal opinion does not fall under the realm of right or wrong. Her rant began, and it was hard to follow, as she went all over the place in her effort to make me see the wrongness of it all. She spoke of Sodom and Gomorrah, as expected, but also pointed to other biblical non sequiturs that she assured me proved her point. Sure, she could insist that the bible implied that whoremongering and infidelity would likely bar your name from the Lamb’s book, but committing yourself to one person you love for life? The sin in that I wasn’t hearing in her plethora of supposed examples.

My eyes began to tear. Not because I was afraid that all of my gay friends and family were damned, nor because this woman was so full of hate. They were tearing because it was June, and the pollen lays thick on every blessed surface at this time of year. I could not stop the torrent of tears, and this woman obviously took it to mean that I was moved, one way or the other, and she upped her ante.

“THOSE PEOPLE BROUGHT THE SCOURGE OF AIDS UPON THE CONTINTENT OF AFRICA!” Her shouting echoed in the stillness of the morning. Her eyes blazed and bulged from her head. It was becoming more difficult to be dismissive of her as harmless in her prejudice.

“I can see that you feel strongly about this,” I said firmly but barely above a whisper, because if this unwanted conversation cut my baby’s nap short, it would not be the gays that would be damned straight to hell. “But I don’t really believe in an angry God. Didn’t Jesus say ‘love one another?”  I was trying to win her over by quoting her Number One Guy. This did not work. Her shouting continued. I don’t really know what she was saying, so focused was I on moving the stroller away from her loud and venom-filled voice. Seriously, she did NOT want to wake my baby. Hell hath no fury like a sleep-deprived mother.

I was dumbfounded that she had turned her argument towards Africa, blaming gays, GAYS, for the AIDS epidemic there. Not a lack of sex education. Not a lack of access to healthcare and medicine. Not rampant government corruption. No, it was the gays who were to blame. Especially the marrying kind, apparently.

I was in turmoil.

The old me, who slept for eight hours a night, who had only myself to worry about, that girl from New Jersey, soooo wanted to go into the ring with this old battleax. This woman was going to spread this awful message, this outright lie, to the children in her care at church. I looked down at my son – my beautiful, sweet, impressionable boy. It made me sick to think that he would someday be exposed to people like this – bigoted, spewing hatred towards people whose only crime was to be in some way different from her.

I wanted her to know she was not fooling me. That she was full of fear and ignorance, and that I was no way moved by her fire and brimstone threats. But I knew that my words would fall on deaf, unbudging ears, and it was a war I didn’t want to wage in front of the baby anyway. I tried to imagine how I would teach him to deal with differences of opinion, and I knew yelling at an old lady would not be the way. I closed my eyes and pictured the man my son would be someday, and I used that image as my inspiration.

“I am really, truly sorry you feel that way,” I said, as I headed in the opposite direction. “I just do not agree.” I could tell it took her a minute to regain her composure. She flashed another angry smile.

“God bless you,” she said through gritted teeth. She began to walk away, but then turned abruptly around.

“AND GO TO CHURCH!” She yelled. She quickly unknitted her brow to offer me one last terrifying smile before waddling off towards the bus stop. Good God, I thought.

Peace was restored to the morning, but I remained a little shaken. I couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed in myself, in my tame reaction to her outrageous attack not only on gay marriage, but on anyone who did not drink her brand of Kool-Aid. I thought, though, of what Dr. King had said and felt a little better about my decision: hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Well, I thought, I do know a thing or two about love. When my son was born, I found out that there was no bottom to the well inside me that held it. Surely I had some to spare for the good of the cause. I didn’t do much to combat that woman in the park, but in my small way I had let her know that I was on the side of love, and that she would not have me to count on in her army of hate.

I walked out of the park and towards the coffee shop. The rest of the world was waking up, and the stillness was giving way to the humming start of a busy, beautiful day. People smiled and nodded as they passed us. Two women, holding hands, said good morning to me as they strolled passed. I watched them as they stopped to admire someone’s garden, arms loosely around each other’s waist, before continuing on their way. It was a perfect sight to counter the confrontation in the park. I wondered if the church lady would be disgusted, would be AFRAID of such sweet, loving gestures, just because it was not between a man and a woman. I’m sure she would be, but I still for the life of me couldn’t understand why. Her own go-to book says that love is kind and that it doesn’t delight in evil. I can only hope that she reads it more closely before she goes to wherever she’s headed and has some explaining to do.

 

Discovering Food

At his fourth month check-up, my son’s pediatrician told us to watch for signs of interest in solid food. He said that his main source of nutrition would continue to be breast milk for a few more months, and that the introduction of solids would be more of a rite of passage,  welcoming him to an important family event – mealtime. It was an idea that I loved. I was bringing him into the fold, sharing with him something that I really cared about, and being able, with any luck, to instill in him a healthy attitude towards the foods he eats. But really, I just couldn’t wait to see the expression on his face.

I didn’t have to wait long for his interest to be piqued. At five months, he began falling silent while we ate, studying our faces, his little mouth moving as though he were working on a piece of steak. I read a little about what foods would be good starters, but as I’ve learned with all baby advice, I thought I would trust my instincts and common sense as well. I knew I wanted to prepare the food myself wherever possible, and I wanted to keep it simple.

I started with the ubiquitous rice cereal, even though I was not excited about it nor its blandness, and lack of any nutritional value. I was not surprised to find that Ronin’s reaction to it was fitting. Eh, his expression said, I am underwhelmed, mama. I waited a few days to make sure he didn’t break out in hives or anything and tried again.

Sweet potatoes. One of my personal favorites. I was so excited to offer him its creamy orange goodness. I think my error was in not thinning it out enough, and the texture was so foreign to him that he cried. Moving on, I thought, undeterred by his waning interest in this new game.

Carrots. I pureed them to death, adding a little breast milk to make them as thin and as rich as crepes. I plopped him, wearing nothing but his diaper, in his bumbo with the tray attached. I decided to make it more of a tactile experience, a get all of your senses in on it sort of thing, though the idea of the resulting mess made me shudder. I put a dollup of the stuff in the middle of the tray. I dragged my index finger through it slowly, as he watched intently. I popped my finger in my mouth and and said, “mmmm.” He was transfixed.

His head bobbled downward to look at the tempting mess on his tray. His head bobbled back up to look at me for reassurance. I nodded, eyes and smile wide. I smacked my lips and said “mmmm” again.

Awkwardly, his little hand, chubby fingers splayed, landed in the blob. He lifted it to examine the glop for a second, then stuffed as many fingers as he could manage into his mouth.

What the…

His initial reaction was not exactly what I’d hoped for.

Have I just been poisoned?

But it didn’t take long for the sweetness to grow on him, nor for him to realize that it was fun to play with, and it was obviously pleasing his mama to no end.

Which way to the buffet line?

The floodgates, for both of us, had been opened.

I pulled out my old rice cooker/steamer I’d gotten as a wedding gift and had hardly put to use in the four years since. I set up the food processer and blender and got to work. Carrots. Butternut squash. Sweet potatoes. Zucchini. String beans. Organic, and from Oregon or as close to Oregon as seasonally possible.

Yum.

Everything sliced and steamed, blended with water in the blender, then spooned into freezer trays and small mason jars. I work fast of course, at short intervals between entertaining and caring for my busy baby. I make a mess of the kitchen, but it’s totally worth it.

I see what’s happening. No matter how I protest, my baby just keeps growing up and towards independence. I know that his nourishment cannot always come just from my body, but I’ve got a few more years where I can influence what he puts into his.

Pretty.

He readily accepts each new food I introduce, and has yet to try something he doesn’t like (rice cereal aside). I sit on the floor next to him and eat my breakfast while feeding him his, and he loves that part most of all. And so do I.  And as much as time is going by way too fast for me, and as much as I have no interest in rushing his babyhood, I do look forward to sitting at the table with my boy, using food not only for it’s intended purpose, but also as a way to stay connected with him. I hope that when he is all grown up he’ll remember the meals he loved as a child, but also memories of stories, laughter, and love shared around that table.

But that will have to wait. For now, I’m just happy to watch his expression everytime he tastes something for the very first time.

 

The Way We Sleep

I’m coming clean because I’m sick of living in fear that my secret will get out. My three month old son sleeps in my bed. My east coast friends just spit their Venti nonfat caramel macchiatos all over their manicurists. Half of my west coast friends smirked  smugly over the rim of their single origin, triple shot espresso cup, while their babies slept soundly in their cribs. The other half wondered what the big deal was, as their 3 year olds tapped them on the shoulder, ready for their afternoon breastfeed.

I guess I’m admitting to it because I am the one who really has the problem with it.

This was not my plan. I read all about sleep training while I was pregnant. I mean, it was basically the thing I focused on the most.  Co-sleeping? Not even on the radar for me. We had a cradle in our bedroom, that we foolishly expected our baby to take to like a fish to water, and a crib in his or her meticulously appointed bedroom, where we ASS-U-ME-D our baby would transition to effortlessly at, oh, about three months.To me, as a highly uncomfortable pregnant person, not yet used to the brutality of sleep deprivation and longing for it to end when the pregnancy did (ha), getting my baby to be a good sleeper was of paramount importance. As a sidenote, in all of my research I somehow missed the fact that “sleeping through the night” means five hours TOPS, and which would be nearly impossible, and perhaps not even healthy for a newborn. Or I was only reading selectively, as that information would have made my swollen feet explode right off of my body.

And the baby only weighed 8 lbs.

But I digress.

I said all the time, “I’m not attached to one way of doing things because I know that it’s impossible to know what will work with my baby.” But I really didn’t understand what that meant. Not really.

Utterly clueless.

My son is a joy. Such an easy baby, when I hear stories of desperate parents dragging their beaten down selves out to their cars for midnight rides with inconsolable babies on board. But he has had some requests that we have been willing to oblige. You let me sleep with you at night – and in a sling strapped across you for daytime naps – and I’ll be a dream, he promised. So in essence he’s given me what I said I wanted – a baby who sleeps really well. I guess I just wasn’t specific about where I wanted that sleeping to take place. I do not refer to our bed as a family bed. I’m not that kind of girl, I tell myself. I merely sleep in a bed with my entire family.

At three months, my son goes to bed at 8, has a sleepy feed at 11 and four, then wakes up for the day at 7:30. That’s nothing to complain about. The long, hot nights sharing a queen-sized bed with my husband, wiggly son, and sometimes our cat? Those are less than spectacular. THE BABY sleeps through the night, even through diaper changes and feedings. My husband doesn’t do so badly himself, often saying after particularly bad nights, “Man, I was OUT COLD last night!” The cat only wakes up if the baby cries, glaring at me accusingly. Mama? Oh, no, mama doesn’t get so much as a couple of consecutive hours. I am usually a bedraggled mess by morning – hair and bedclothes askew, scratches from tiny nails scattered across my chest, teeny bruises on my thighs from Senor Kicky Pants. But inspite of all of that, I have a hard time imagining letting him fend for himself in a crib all night.

So what happened? How did I go from having such a militant attitude, to a woman willing to give up her basic rights to a benevolent dictator? Everything changes the moment you lock eyes with your progeny. You agonize over every detail of child-rearing, terrified that one bad decision could potentially transform your perfect little angel into a sociopath or a Republican, or whatever is your greatest fear. His cry is unbearable to you. So, basically, this is what happened:

His excellency.

Why don’t YOU tell him he has to sleep all the way at the other end of the hall, in a room devoid of warm-bodied grown ups, that lady who carries his food source in her bra nowhere in sight. Go ahead, look into those baby blues and tell him.

I wasn’t expecting to be such putty in his tiny dimpled hands, but here I am. I have no exit strategy for this sleeping arrangement that I know needs to end at some time. I get two points of view when I break down, delirious from exhaustion, and tell people. Either a horrified, “Oh! You’ve got to put an end to it NOW! Just let him cry it out for a couple of nights and he’ll be fine.” Or the much more comforting though still not very helpful, “Oh, when it needs to end, you’ll find a way.”

I worry constantly that I am creating either a monster, or an overly dependent child. But. He often smiles and laughs in his sleep. He wakes up happy and rested and easily adapts to whatever plan we have for the day. And some nights I actually do sleep alright, at least as well as any other mother of a young baby might. Not to mention all of the little, unbearably precious moments I get to have with him, as he drifts off to sleep, and as he groggily wakes again. The way we lay sometimes, nose to nose, our mutual admiration written on our faces, the feeling of utter awe at the enormity of my love for this child – these are the moments I try to memorize, knowing I may want to call them up again someday.  This will not last forever, I know, whether I try to dictate how the end of it goes down or not. On good days, when I’m not totally exhausted I remember this, and I let myself soften. I know that someday, probably much sooner than I will be ready, I will hear the inevitable, “I do it MY-SELF, mommy,” signalling the beginning of the end of this particular kind of dependence on me. When my son is a boy, and then a man, I will realize how very short a time he was a baby.

So, there it is, out in the open. I guess the REAL truth is that I AM okay with it. I think I know that, in the end, I will have a much harder time ending this arrangement than my son will. The situation is far from perfect. But, for now anyway, this is the way we sleep.

Tiny boy in a big bed.

 

Artisan Hot Chocolate for Every Taste

It’s that time of year when we Portlanders need to look on the BRIGHT side, despite the gloom that is overtaking our skies. I’m as sad as the next person that fall is slowly succumbing to winter, but I know that with the cold comes a fabulous excuse to indulge in a warm treat—hot chocolate!

There are many reasons for loving this city, but let me add artisan hot chocolate to the list. Is that a real term? I don’t know. What I do know is that there are lots of people in Portland who have raised hot chocolate to an artform.

Whether you’re in the mood for a decadent chocolate indulgence, everyday hot cocoa or a vegan hot chocolate, you’re sure to find a favorite on this list.

To read this story in its entirety, please visit Neighborhood Notes.

 

Auld Lang Syne

It was more than 20 years ago that I last haunted the halls (or smoked in the stairwells) of Raritan High School. Recently, a large portion of my class headed to the Jersey shore for a monumental reunion. Twenty years. How did that happen?

I’ve never been one of those people to lament the end of high school; never thought of them as my “glory days,” but I certainly didn’t hate it, either. I was looking forward to catching up, though since the dawning of Facebook, a lot of catching up has already taken place. I booked a flight, found a dress that hid what’s changed, and accentuated what’s held up alright, and headed east.

It turned out to be a lot less like catching up and simply more like picking up where we’d left off. Aside from the obvious physical changes (“Stop staring at my bald head!” one old friend yelled as I went in for a hug), the room that night was filled with a bunch of goofy 17 year-olds who happened to be walking around in bodies nearing middle age.

Snippets of personal stories since graduation emerged, but no one seemed very interested in talking about the things that make life hard sometimes, the trials we have all been through, how the ravages of time affected us. We just wanted to laugh, to dance, to be right there in that surreal moment where it could have just as easily been 1990, for the way we carried on.

For me, and I think for many in attendance, time has only made the memories of high school sweeter. Truly, we had no idea how good we had it. Young, fearless, not yet disillusioned by much of anything at all, we laughed heartily, we challenged ourselves mightily, we loved fiercely. Seeing the people with whom I shared those experiences brought back the intensity of it all – things I’d forgotten or had downplayed in my mind over time.

I returned home to the west coast tired, happy, and sad that it couldn’t have lasted just a little longer. Would I want to be 17 again? Not a chance. But sharing an evening with those with whom I knew before I had aches, responsibilities, wrinkles? I really hope we get to do that again. A twenty-fifth anyone?