Upon a Sunny Day

A busy week.  The busiest of 2014, actually.

A fairly normal Monday.  Tuesday I tried a book group.  Should I have been an English teacher?  Maybe. Should I start my own book club and re-read The Sound and the Fury?  Maybe.

Wednesday….The day before my workplace’s biggest yearly event.  Much work.  Deadlines.  I followed through with my plan to go for a run post workday.  It rained.  Yet I ran.  Then I babysat, which was great.  Then the question…..

About 1985.  Through me for a loop.  October 1985.  What was I doing?  Is October 1985 significant? Hmm.  Not sure.

Yet, was it Monday?  Or Tuesday?  In the morning.  I thought of October 1985.  And choices.  People.  Books.  The library.  Regrets?  Maybe.  Naive girl.  Seventeen, and all that.

Why do you ask?

I reflect.  Analyze.  Think too much.  I’m very much like that girl, in many ways.  Ready.  Looking ahead.  Music and art and wishing people understood why I like the clothes from 1964 I found in my grandma’s garage.  Even though today, those clothes are long gone but I still like the hunt in a thrift store.  Well, a few people understood.  The others who….

Yet I chose poorly.  Chose the ones who didn’t so often.  Let them take something.  I understood them; they had no clue about me.

October.  I like October.  Change in the air and good memories.  But 1985?  Why do you ask?  What is the significance?  I think I might know.  So I concentrate.  Remember the car and the jeans that didn’t get fully dry in the dryer and how hard it is to put them on.  No one else on the earth knows that tidbit.  The damp Levis.  Rushing.  And the author.  Me impatient and undecided and again, naive.  And now looking back, I realize more than naive.  Maybe hurtful.  Dumb.  Why don’t smart girls value intelligence?

Even now.  Oh, I tell myself now I do.  I will.  I grew up, right?  As did the others.  The smart and talented have settled into their lives, interesting or uninteresting as they may be.  And the edgy? The absolutely all wrong for me? Time shows they too have their difficulties.  No one is immune.

They have class reunions for people like me.  Those who want to go back.  Revisit.  Confess. Apologize.  Or does it even matter?  Thank you for liking my aunt’s blouse I wore twenty years after it was sewn?  Even though it’s more than twenty years since you complemented me?

Do other people think of these things?  Or am I the only one?  Do others recollect?  Second guess?

The event came on Thursday.  A day of errands and hoping the printer gets the job done.  A day of seeing people I haven’t seen for months.  People who are happy I look happy.  Happy I am happy.  The biggest crowd I’ve faced since last October.  The last month I remember being somewhat joyful before my marriage ended.

I felt accomplished after Thursday.  I helped create a success, along with all my coworkers.  And strangely I think I feel a little like that girl in 1985.  The girl who could say a few things about Chaucer and hoped for a career in Interior Design.  The person today who pledges if she ever remarries, the future husband must be able to name at least one of Henry VIII’s wives.  High standards?  I’d say no.  My standards.  And history matters, right?

I still am not certain about 1985.  Why did it come up this week?  Sure I can trace the logistics. Something that came in the mail.  A silly quiz about cities.  Knowing who ended up where.  Remembering that season.  Wondering if I broke someone’s heart but catching myself because that seems so assuming and self important.  And oh so many years ago.

Silly ramblings.  What’s inside my head.  Surely doesn’t make sense to anyone else.  Yet it had to come out.  In words.  That I will pretend someone else will read.  Sure, someone will read this.  At least a few people.  But for me, in many ways, it’s a letter.  Vague remembrances.  A letter to myself to find that girl again and embrace her.  A letter to someone else who maybe remembers why we met at the library.  Insignificant as it might have been.  Or wasn’t.