I came home from the mini reunion and pulled out my yearbooks. I didn’t remember people or rather I couldn’t place their now face with anything in my past. Indeed, men who once had full heads of hair pose a particular challenge simply because the brain’s creative process struggles with removing hair from the head. I can picture a bald man with hair easier than removing hair. I actually like a bald man. It’s a sign of maturity, I suppose. When I was 20 years younger, I was opinionated mostly because most of male peers had hair. But now, as several of my peers have lost their hair or elect to shave what remains of their receding hairlines, I have come to appreciate the bald man. It is becoming. It’s like a woman with laugh lines and that certain patina of aging – like Helen Mirrin or Helen Hunt.
Anyways, the yearbooks helped recall those boys who at 16 I knew for a year and haven’t seen in 30 years. They are good men, husbands, fathers and by their presence at this mini reunion – present. Most people aren’t present. They don’t exist in the now. They fret over the future and ruminate over the past and miss out on the now. We are all guilty. And maybe the majority of the time, the people who came on Saturday aren’t existing in the now. maybe they just took a brief repose in the moment that was Saturday evening but it was truly lovely. These were not people I knew particularly well but we all shared one thing….an inspirational teacher, a teacher we all cared enough about to trek out of our normal day-to-day lives to spend a few hours reminiscing. And it was fun and funny and easy. Yes, easy. Easy conversation. Easy meal time banter. Easy. And that is was being in the present affords. Ease. When energy is not squandered on the past or the future, it is luxuriously available for the NOW. And when you spend that time on people NOW, they feel rich and spoiled and significant.
I am so glad I drove to Miami, that I took time out of my day-to-day to go there and be in the now. I stopped worrying about the office and the mid-term exams and the Christmas shopping I have not yet done. I stopped doing my financials in my head or tending the long list of chores and tasks and wanna-dos. I let it all go ….I even let the boys take my car and drive off into the Miami streets without me….I let it all go and I went off to just BE with people I might not have ever really known but who I think I now know much better.