The Spirits of Yester-year

When I was a senior in high school I had a fun year. Having spent the majority of my junior year trying to survive Algebra II & Physics (my good friend Jeremy Williams told me when it was time to sign up for classes that, between Physics and Chemistry, Physics was the easier one, and the one that required less math...thanks for that Jer...to this day, I cannot look at a bridge without feeling that sinking feeling that comes before you flunk a test...I would routinely get home after wrestling practice at about 4:30, drink some water and then get started on my math & science homework...which I would finish at right about 9:00; I would do all my English/History homework at school in the half hour before classes got started); with this in mind, I was more than happy to ignore the advice of my high school academic counsellor and avoid just about every real class.

This was my senior year schedule, roughly adapted for the semester change, and as best as I can remember it in order:

Creative Writing
Wood Shop/Drama
Weight-Lifting (Originally it was going to be AP Psych...but, again, that involved work...and I was NOT interested...and I was a wrestler, after all)
Choir
AP English (my one *real* class...I was in a room with the smarties--including my wife and my best friend, BJ Cadd--and I was suffering woefully from senior-itus...Mrs. Cranston would usually evaluate my efforts with a look of mingled pity and impatience...I think she was happily surprised to hear that I learned to love learning in college...this class did actually change my life though, as it was the first time I ever read a C.S. Lewis work that wasn't Narnia...about a year-and-a-half later a discussion with Emily Moothart about the Great Divorce would be one of the significant stepping stones for getting me into the Torrey Honors Institute)
Bible
Photo/Pottery

It was the only year in high school that I made the good grade lists. I know what you're thinking...how on earth did I get into college? I wonder that often myself...to say nothing of how did I actually get into Torrey. I was lazy, and wasted a lot of opportunities...I don't really have regrets (it was a great year), but my academic life has suffered. There are worse things, and fortunately, God is gracious.

During my semester working on Black & White photos (which is a real art, and I loved it...it's a dream of mine to re-learn how to do the whole thing, and make a dark room of my own...maybe someday) we would take pictures of friends, trees, cars, water in the parking lot, and through the miracle of the absence of color, create instant nostalgic mementos for our youth.

It is something few people can understand; unless you're a missionary kid, a military brat, or something very similar, I cannot explain what is like to grow up without a home. I am not complaining, either; it is just that this fact altered the way we all interacted with everything, in ways that I am certain we did not realize at the time. We had to carve out pieces of permanence for ourselves, so we could explain where we came from. Figuring out where we were going to often proved a challenge. College was, for me, just the next step...I had zero expectations and just about no specific ambitions for it...I just knew my time as a kid in the Philippines was over and I had to go out alone and make my life into something (in all fairness, I should add that I chose to go alone...I chose an expensive University on the opposite side of the country from my parents, at least in part initially because of a girl..again, wisdom was clearly not my gift).

While we would work in the dark red glow of the dark room, and watch our pictures materialize in the developer fluid, we would listen to music. Music is one of those special gifts, that allows us to connect events and feelings with sounds, so that some experiences never entirely fade away from the memory. When I was in there, we would listen to 1 of 4 - 5 different tapes (back when things were still on tapes...at least, in the P.I.). One of my favorites was a song already dripping with nostalgia all on its own; added to that environment, it became an anthem for the cleaving that was taking place that last year at Faith Academy. Although my state-side counter-parts knew this song as "that annoying song over-played on the radio" or a song off of a soundtrack, I knew it only as "The Sunscreen Song," on my friend's tape.

It's been 8 years since I had access to this song, but every now and then I'd hear a snippet somewhere, or look at one of my black and white pictures of the flowers that grew on our hill, or the tree that we'd climb during lunch time, or the puddles left after one of my last tropical storms, and I would remember my Fall semester senior year in high school. I stumbled across an i-Tunes gift card yesterday from two years ago, and for the first time I have access to DSL...so, once again, I have access to instant nostalgia in song form.

Some of the maxims remind me of painful mistakes, or some of the happiest moments I can remember (I am one of those rare few that actually enjoyed my high school experience...I attribute this to my parents, my teachers, my friends, my circumstances...but above all, my God, who really was merciful; I made it through with my innocence mostly intact, something that I have since learned not to take for granted). Mostly, they make me reflect on how I have changed since the last time I heard them, and whether or not I still consider them to be wisdom or "a form of nostalgia, dispensing it (advice) is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than its worth."

Maybe it's because it's been eight years...maybe it is because we have just moved and I feel a little alone and am starting over once again...maybe it is because I am now a dad, a husband, and my best friend from high school is going to be married this Spring and that makes me feel a little old...maybe it's because Facebook keeps showing me pictures of people I knew when I was my student's age or younger...but I have been very nostalgic of late. I want to connect with my past, and if possible to make it a part of my present. I hope I have abandoned the foolish lie I accepted when I was in high school, that those were the best times of my life, and that being young was the best part of living, period. Youth is painful, and it is good that it transitions into maturity. But there are sweet things about youth, and the bonds and memories of our firsts are worth treasuring, so long as we don't try to revive a life that nature and time has resigned to the past.

This is why we strive to be winsome, curious souls that grow in the Lord, but retain our youthful excitement about the potential to grow and learn and explore the undiscovered countries of heaven.