Disturbing Numbers and Class Reunions

20 Years, 30 pounds, 14 years of marriage, 3 babies and 1 miscarriage have brought me to the Garden City High School Class of 1988 20 year reunion. Will I still be recognizable? Will I recognize anyone else? I am convinced that this weekend will provide fodder for years of nightmares. You know the kind I mean? Like the ones where you can't remember your locker combination. Worse still - showing up for a debate tournament and I have no evidence or showing up for a final in a class that I haven't attended all semester (OK, that one really happened). Pop-quiz hot shot: Who is the girl with the long brown hair that keeps smiling at me?

Things start out pretty good. I see a few faces I recognize - maybe this won't be as scary as I imagined. It is actually kind of nice. I am so relieved that I know a few names and that people are actually calling me by name that I am having trouble remembering which ones I hung out with, who were the "popular" kids and who belonged to "other cliques". It is a sweet grace that lasts for the night. Eventually, though the old walls close in on me and my capacity to keep milling through the crowd and chatting with newly familiar faces evaporates.

I am different in many ways, but it is almost more than I can deal with just orienting myself with the past. I have changed so much in the past 16 years. The seven years before that - three years of high school and four years of college - are like a dream. Back then I was living as a rational hedonist - and why not? If it felt good, why not do it? If there is no objective standard for human behavior, beyond the minimum standard of the laws of civil society, why not do what serves us and our own desires? Inside, I feel like I left a path of destruction on everyone and everything I was involved with. Hopefully the damage wasn't as bad as I imagine. All I have to say for myself is, "I am so sorry."

In 1992, I was confronted with the indisputable power of the Holy Spirit, and became a Christian. As an intellectual, I had to ask myself, "What have I gotten myself into??" As a debater, radical thinker, environmentalist, pacifist, antiestablishmentarian, chemical imbibing, independent Ayn Randian, I had to reconcile what I thought was true with what I now know is TRUTH. Big problem solved. Now I can live a philosophically consistent life. I just can never go home again.

So, here I am, a born-again Christian, stay-at-home mom. If America had a caste system, I would be an untouchable. It has taken me years to stop saying things like, "I used to be a...." or "When my kids are older I am going back to law school." I have even stopped coloring my hair - what's the point - it is just going to keep growing out grey. I am being "refined like silver" - it says so in the bible. God is starting with the top of my head. If it wasn't so hackneyed I would pierce my nose or get a tattoo or something. For now I will enjoy growing my kids and look forward to the day when I will be free to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail. I can't change the 20 years, but maybe I will lose the extra 30 pounds. The 14 years of marriage, the pregnancies and miscarriage have marked me, but I wouldn't trade them for the world.