A Restore Point
I believe that at certain points in our lives, we all need to get in touch with our home-base, our past. A modern computer terminology for fixing problems is going back to a 'restore point' I love this concept, this word, 'restore point'. I believe the frequency of this restoring back is personal to the individual, but it needs to be more than once. In modern times with our tendency of moving so fast, where we often don't live in the same town, let alone the same country that we were brought up in. Where change is so fast, if you don't keep up, then you will quickly get left behind. How our friendships and relationships are as transient, temporary, and as replaceable as our jobs and household appliances, then without a place or friends that link us to our past, our childhood, - good or bad, we become lost.
In the last month, quite unintentionally I have been getting grounded in my past. I would have been the first to say that I had moved on from my home town, my conservative friends. There would be nothing in common, or anything that I could really link to my 'here and now'. How wrong I was, and how pleased I was to be proven to be wrong.
In my latter years of high school, there were a group of us girls that hung around (it was an all girls school ), the group, then grew extras of boyfriends, friends of the boy friends and so on. Though I was part of the "gang" I was also a bit on the outside, for I admit I was a little wilder than most of the rest, and had come from out of area, but they still made me feel part of them.
Much to my surprise, a couple of weeks in the New Year, I got a letter to let me know that a get-together picnic was planned at a town that was mid-point for us. On the day planned I was in the middle of regrouping myself and was not sure I would be much fun, or even fit in, as I knew my life had taken quite a different path from many of the old group. How surprised I was. I wasn't proven wrong about the directions we had taken, but I was surprised at how accepted and grounded I felt being among my old friends, despite our differencing life experiences. For once again we accepted each other as we always had. The extra wrinkles, changed body shapes, the grey hair, or the brief disconcerted embarrassing moments of trying to match up this image with a younger memory, did not change the rapport between us. As I watched from the extremities, (as I always did) the interactions, and subgroups quickly re-established. It was so wonderful.
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