I was in Washington DC last month. I helped organize a reunion of my boarding school sisters, most I had not seen in 25+ years. I also took Mini-me with me as the last time we were in DC we missed many sights due to his walking pneumonia. Having many of my growing up years in the area, who knows how many times I’ve seen these monuments. However, it’s my duty to take my kids to see their nation’s capital when they don’t have the luxury of growing up here.

I always have a certain melancholy when I’m here. Like I can feel the ghost of my old self walking besides me and then realizing that the old eyes are the same as the young eyes.  I know I’m not imagining things, the 80’s in Washington DC were magical, liberating,….life changing.

Both during and after the reunion there were many who had expressed how our time, living together at school, were some of the best times our lives. I’m not sure how to describe it, we didn’t do anything particularly remarkable, it was nothing like the movies. I myself have tried to figure it out, I think it was just the fact that during some of the most critical time of adolescence, we never were nor felt alone. Perhaps in the grand scheme of human existence, that’s magical and perhaps why I feel comfort when I am in town.

At the reunion there were a half-dozen albums of photos taken and saved by the nuns.  I guess I didn’t expect that time travel would also occur on this trip.  There were several of me capturing a moment of time that I hardly remember.  But I do remember her.  Fondly and with as much love as if she was my own child.

I truly miss her.

Little me