Loving It

What a fantastic day yesterday. We went to the school where our friend teaches and became part of his class for an hour. Just so happens his students are reading a book which is set in the province I live in so he invited his students to ask questions. He particularly emphasised my writing and that brought lots of questions from his kids. At the end of the class he had me and my friend do peer editing of his students' writings. That was cool. The three of us had studied journalism together so encouraging reading and writing is dear to all of our hearts.

When we arrived at his school he was out teaching phys. ed. He told us later that when he turned around and saw us coming towards him he thought to himself they are getting close to 50 so that means I'm getting close to 50. (We later corrected him and said we are NOT close to 50) He told his brother after school that yesterday he felt his age. For my girlfriend and I yesterday we felt like we were in a time warp and were 18 again. We took a drive through the college grounds and saw the dorms where we had lived still standing as if they hadn't been upgraded in 28 years. We went and parked in front of the house where we rented the upstairs together. We peered closely in the dark and saw the same very old windows still in place and I ran to the door and saw our address still on the mailbox. This many years later the house is still being rented out as two different apartments. We wondered if they'd fixed the banister yet. The banister that came off in my hand when I'd grabbed it to get up the stairs. I'd been on crutches that day so having the banister come off the wall made a precarious venture up the stairs even more so. We loved our little apartment.

We drove past the restaurant where we used to stuff our pockets full of their little loaves of bread to tide us over a few more meals. We really were starving students. My friend reminded me yesterday of the time we spent all our grocery money on the fixings for lasagna because her parents were coming for supper. When they arrived her dad didn't want or like lasagna so he took us out for supper. We ate that lasagna for many days. Then we remembered that when we did have money we spent it on stupid things. Once I spent $95 on phone calls to dearest one over a weekend long drunk. I made $300 a month then so those phone calls were part of being young and foolish.

Yesterday we felt like we were still young and foolish but in a good way. We watched the students walking along to class and remembered when we did the same thing. Then we realized with a little horror that to those students we would be old. I told my friend it's a good thing I dyed my hair last week. Otherwise I would have gone from old to ancient in one glance.

That all said I'm glad to be where I am. I don't regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. The whole of it has brought to me to this day. And today I'm loving it.