The Difference a Quarter of a Century Makes

The first time I saw the movie The Big Chill, I was in college. Being in the midst of those heady days of intimate relationships with those whose lives overlapped my own minute by minute, it was easy for me to believe not only in the depth of connection the main characters shared, but in the implication that nothing better had ever come along. When Glenn Close's character said that she'd been the best she ever was back in those days, with those friends, it seemed only natural to me. College was, after all, the best time of your life, right? That's the way it looked to me, sitting in the Student Center movie theater watching The Big Chill for a dollar. That's what seemed to be suggested by authors like Anton Myrer and Erich Segal. That's what my friends and I anticipated when we camped out on the bridge on a starlit night or drank wine coolers from 2-liter bottles by the lagoon and sang old Supremes and Van Morrison songs to one another. It was the underlying assumption in the writings I so carefully preserved from those days, the descriptions of the moments I'd never want to forget.

At 19, I thought the way those characters came back together and the things they shared were romantic and touching. In some ways, they were. But at 44, Glenn Close's line made me sad. Not, as it might have made me sad the first time through, with nostalgia for those lovely lost days, but because with a quarter of a century of additional life experience under my belt, it struck me as tragic that a woman in her mid-thirties would have peaked during her college days (or even feel that she had).

I loved college, and I had an amazing group of interesting, eclectic, talented and supportive friends whose influence in my life I will always cherish. But I was just beginning when I spent those long winter afternoons in the dorm with them, talking about art and philosophy and politics. I was just beginning to learn how to do something about the things I believed, and the things I saw as most important in those days were informed in part by a lack of information. I like to think that I'm the best I've ever been with my daughter; I like to think the best I'll ever be has yet to come.

Forks in the Road

This morning, I sat in the cafeteria of a small private high school my daughter might attend next year and stared--discreetly, I hope--at a man. It's happened to all of us, hasn't it? In some unexpected place, you suddenly spot someone you're 95% sure is someone from your past--someone who was once so significant that you wouldn't have believed you'd ever be unsure--but you are unsure. Unsure enough that you're afraid to speak, not because you're afraid that you're wrong, but because the question mark you'd have to attach to his name would be unforgivable if you were right.

We were both early. I had plenty of time to study him (discreetly, I hope) before the meeting commenced. I thought about walking in the snow with him, about eating rhubarb straight from the garden and blackberries plucked from a bush. I summoned up the one time I'd seen him with his wife and children, years earlier, and tried to remember exactly how he'd looked then, but it was futile. I could only see him refusing to dance with me under the first disco ball I'd ever seen, jumping to defend me during a basketball game in his friend's driveway, appearing at my side with a delicate, powdered-sugar laced Christmas cookie after some silly spat.

I come from a large family. I have cousins I've never met and cousins I've seen only once or twice in my life. I probably have cousins I don't even know exist. But this cousin, I loved. We played with Play-Dough and crayons together, imagined arctic expeditions in his back yard and went to movie matinees together every Wednesday in summer. It was to his house that I took my brand new Pong game and my handheld electronic football game; we made tattoos with marker and applied them to one another and to our younger siblings. I remember what I bought him for his ninth birthday, the day he brought his new puppy to my house, the first time I walked to his house alone. I even remember waiting impatiently for him to get up from his nap when he was still in his crib but I had achieved the lofty age of three.

And now I don't know what he looks like.

I sat in a room for two hours this morning and didn't know whether or not he was sitting thirty feet from me. And somehow, not knowing whether or not I was seeing him made me sad in a way that knowing I wasn't never did.