So tonight I went to a 50th birthday party. It was for my sister's high school classmates from 1980.
I really didn't know too many people who were going. I knew many of her classmates from stalking her yearbook that I was forbidden to even look at when I was in 9th grade (yeah, right!). I pored over every page! There were pictures of these kids who looked so grown up to me. When you're fourteen, three years older is practically a lifetime!
I always wondered why all the boys in her class were so cute and almost all the boys in my class were puny or lame or both.
Seeing all these people tonight, I realized how different that gap becomes as we age. It's barely perceptible at this stage. But the cute boys were, for the most part, handsome men and of course most of the women looked like they hadn't aged in the past thirty-something years.
But it was a delightful evening and I felt at an advantage because I didn't know too many of these people and I could be an observer.
I watched as people looked at each other for a glimmer of their eighteen year old selves. When none was found, a name was uttered, the light of recognition followed by laughter and genuine camaraderie.
This was a fitting way to spend my Saturday night as it is my birthday weekend. I became aware of how precious time is. I think I've known that for a long time. But, I really saw it tonight. It was not a clingy, desperate sort of precious. It was more of a "Why the heck did we wait so long to do this?" sort of precious.
I smiled the whole night. And these people were strangers to me. But yet we are connected by a tiny thread. We all went to the same school and grew up in the same small village and had the same teachers. We didn't go through anything life-altering together. But we have a common bond.
I am not one to pine away for my "glory days" since there was very little glory in my high school career. So much of it was just awful. But I forged friendships that I still have to this day. And we did go through life-altering times....deaths, births, weddings, illness.
Upon seeing my 50 year old sister and her 50 year old classmates together tonight, I realized that, however tenuous that thread can become, the connection isn't going anywhere.
So, on my 47th birthday (technically less than 24 hours away), I will think of all the tiny threads that are stretched out across this country and even across this world...of people who I rarely see but touched my life nonetheless. I will remember that we are all connected and I will send a wish out into the universe that we will never forget these tiny, common threads that bind us together.
Happy birthday to me!
