Okay, so a 5 month hiatus from blogging is a little extreme, but what can I say..

I drove through Stillwater with Chris this afternoon. We went to Colly's son Axel's 1st birthday in a park near downtown, so on our way back to minneapolis I took the scenic route through good ol croixwood.

Time feels strange. I'm now to the point where I can look back to over 10 years ago as the last time I was putting around that town, and over TWENTY years since my first memories of living there. I don't, on a day to day basis, feel that 28 is old. I fully recognize that I'm a) still in my 20's, b) have no countable wrinkles, c) have no countable grey hairs, and d) am still able to sit cross-legged on the floor without groaning about my knees or back. However, it's days like these that make me stop and reflect on how much life is already behind me.

I have so many memories. I drive along those roads I used to bike on and it's a veritable slideshow of millions of flashes of moments I haven't thought about in, oh, 10 to 20 years. That feels old. As we drove along the winding neighborhood roads, past houses I've seen a thousand times before, a knot was forming in the pit of my stomach. Life feels like it was so intense then. The feelings of a youth now over were so vivid, even with the pieces of my future all bundled up in the air-conditioned car with me. I wanted to stop. I wanted to pull up into my old driveway, get out of the car, pull weeds from the garden my mom and I would have planted, run down the backyard hill I know like the freckles on my arm, and sit on the patio while my dad cooked a steak on the grill.

My 10 yr highschool reunion is coming up in a few weeks. That also feels old. Back when we were graduating and teachers were saying to us, what do you think you'll be doing in 10 years? Of course, we never had a good answer, since how were we to know? What a ridiculous question, really. From people who had seen the way decades of life pass in flashes, and who had experienced for themselves - many times over, I'm sure - the moment of reflection when you look back and say "wow, I never could have predicted I'd end up here". And I never could have. I'm phenomenally happy, but I never could have predicted it.

The one thing I'm mildly dreading about the reunion is the one thing I'll have to do all night ... make small talk for hours, replaying the same conversation over and over again with everyone I happen to bump into at the hors d'ouvres table. The thing is, I know that when I see these people and begin that same conversation, that I will feel a sincere desire to reconnect and to learn all about the turns their lives have taken. But somehow even the sincerest of small-talk question and answer becomes quickly stagnant and uncomfortable. It's like we all wish we could pop into 90 second booths to rattle off our answers, screech our "oh!"s and "wow!"s, and then have the dinger go off so that we can swiftly and comfortably exit the conversation. That way we could avoid all the weirdness and awkward looking around for someone else to approach or something else to eat. This is probably why reunions are notoriously great spots for drinking. I think I'll suggest this setup.

So we'll see. I'm sure it'll be fine, especially since I'll have Chris as my own little oasis I can melt into if the people overload gets to be too much. But I still think it'll be one of those things that make me feel old.

As we drove along our South Minneapolis street to our house, I started to realize that one day I would be having the same kind of experience I had today, but next time it'll be about my life in my late twenties. One day I'll drive back through this little neighborhood and I'll remember all of those times. All of the sweat and hard work that went into our gardens and lawn and picnic table. Moving here, meeting Chris, going to the corner hardware store, and all those other minute things that feel like the same old same old to me right now.

One day these things too will give me a knot in my stomach for the remembering of it all.