Memory Lane

I hardly know where to begin...so many memories are swirling around in my mind. Friday the kiddies and I went to my parent's house, had a fabulous country lunch, and then we went to the alumni walk at my high school. Mr. Lipstick stayed home doing this:
He is building a stacked stone fence around our house. I am so proud of my Mr. Lipstick-he is so smart and creative and I am hot about those muscles.

As I pulled into the parking lot of the school, I felt anxious and tears filled my eyes. I kept telling JBB that I was glad that he was there. Here's the beautiful building:

As soon as I walked in the door and saw the hallway, I had tears streaming down my face. My throat was tight and I had no voice. I turned around, almost ready to walk out the door and I was instantly hugged by the mother of a girl from my class. She has been a teacher at the school forever, and I felt like I was back in elementary school. It was comforting to see her after all these years. After a few minutes, the tide of emotion subsided. I walked down the hall and started looking in each of rooms, encountering people from my past and reminiscing. Here is the room where I had English and History:

There was a silent auction for most everything in the building. The was the hottest item:

I was vying for this register cover until the bid reached $150. I realized that I was bidding against an old friend who now has a couple of kids at the school. She has served as the alumni association president for a few years and has taken over 700 museum quality pictures of the school. All of a sudden, I didn't want the register cover anymore, and I desperately wanted her to have it. My mother and I started watching the bid card for her. She won in the end for $200.

Eventually my Daddy and JBB were off playing, and my Mother, Nonna (my grandmother), Pretty Girl, and I walked from room to room. Here are some of the highlights:


In one of the upstairs room, I saw another friend whom I have known for 29 years. We attended kindergarten through graduation together. She was there with her three sons, and she is just as I remembered. She has a fabulous laugh, gorgeous red hair, and a spunky personality. It was an absolute joy to see her. Amazingly, she looks exactly the same as the day we graduated (in a good way);some folks just have the fountain of youth!

We also saw another kindergarten through twelfth grade friend (one of the daughters of the woman who hugged me as I walked in the building). She is just as kind and beautiful as I remembered. She now is a stay at home mom with a couple of sons. We got a picture of the three of us and our six sons and Pretty Girl. That's one for the scrapbook.

I also saw the Big Man on Campus. He was a senior when I was a freshman; he actually remembered me (or faked it really well). He is still charismatic and handsome, and it was good to see him.

In the end, I purchased three commemorative bricks, some flasks and funnels from the science room, and a beautiful line drawing of the school (done by the friend who won the bidding for the register covers).

It was hard to leave. I kept finding excuses to go back in the building and just see it all one more time. I wish it could be restored. My heart is sick that it will soon just be a memory. I can remove myself enough to see that it is in disrepair, and I know it would be a financial burden to restore it. The hard part is that it is still beautiful to me. I realized later that night that I can envision how Mr. Lipstick could make it look....restored windows, all the drop ceilings and dry wall removed, original fixtures returned to their original glory. It would be flawless, like time had just stopped and it was 1912 again. That's just my fantasy world, no more real or practical than fantasy baseball.

In the end, I drove around the building one more time. My K-12 friend and her family were out front, Big Man on Campus was helping someone load something into an SUV, and my fabulous red-headed friend was making arrangements to pick up the lockers she bought (not just any locker...she had written her name in Sharpie on the door 17 years earlier). In the rear view mirror, it didn't seem much different than driving away from a basketball game or a play, except this time I was really grown-up and I had two precious children of my own in the back seat.