Several weeks ago I attended my 20th-year high school reunion. Out of a graduating class of 50+ students, I was one of nine or ten to attend the get-together. I was petrified going in. Flying back to Birmingham, all I could think was "this was a huge mistake. What am I doing here?" In fact, I stood indecisively for several minutes on the curb outside the wine bar where the first of the two evenings was being held (this one with all alumni, the next just with my particular class). With my suitcases.

But I took a breath and drove myself in.

It turned out that as soon as I had a drink in my hand I was approached by three people from my class -- two of whom I disliked during school -- and they were great to see. All of them were a delight to talk with, and as a few more of our classmates showed up, I was surprised to find that I hadn't a single negative thought about any of them. We had grown up, I guess, and each of us looked like an adult (except for me, of course, who still looks like a kid). I found myself talking to people I'd never spoken to, and who wouldn't have given me the time of day in school, and wouldn't you know it, we had things to talk about.

In fact, the weirdest part of the weekend, all told, was the effect that familiarity had on me: specifically that I began to lose sight of all the intervening time. This was nowhere more true than out at Richard Cusick's parents' house. I stayed in the upstairs garage apartment, as I had done many evenings two decades before, and it felt like I had never left. I sat in Pia and George's kitchen, and relaxed with Richard over beer, and tromped around the woods at the farm, and it felt like I was in high school again, and that I could be that guy so easily, and now without all the messed up crap that high school kids deal with all the time.

And Mara was there. That scared me, a bit, because things didn't end well, back then. Yes, it was high school, and what kind of relationship does end well when you're figuring out life for the first time, but nevertheless Mara left a deep impact on my heart as a young man of 17. She had exactly the same mannerisms, exactly the same voice, and the same eyes. She seemed happy; just married a year ago, to a gentleman who coaches aspiring pro tennis players, I think. Seeing her wasn't like slipping back into my younger self. I was conscious initially of the distance there, but still welcomed her with a hug. I wish Shel had been with me, frankly.

So, not that night but the next I had the opportunity to sit down with her and find out what she's been up to since then, and it's been a lot: tried a career as a singer/songwriter, learned to play guitar and piano, collects guitars, works all kinds of odd jobs, was a webmaster for some years, learned to translate Greek at St. Johns, traveled to Japan to play music for a while, etc. etc. I found myself overwhelmed somewhat, and I exclaimed "When did you manage to do all this?"

Her reply made me realize how dangerous the feeling of familiarity was: "It's been twenty years, Randall."

Twenty years since those formative days of my life, gone. I've now lived longer since those days than I had lived up to and including them.

If I think too hard about it I feel like I'll fly apart. Is this what it is to get old? Do you lose yourself as you leave the places and people who were there in your making? I'd like to think they actually come with me, but that feels untrue. There's an exchange, maybe. I leave something of me there, and take something of them and that place with me. What does it mean to be whole again, as memory accumulates?

Maybe I should try reading Proust again.