Once Upon a Time: True Stories of an Aspiring Writer

30: Dear Self...(also, Where Are They Now?)

JUST BEFORE GRADUATING COLLEGE, you'll have a dream.

You are walking back from meeting for worship, like Quaker school days. Only instead of going back and forth between the school campuses, you'll be walking on a street near your house. Instead of the few houses normally on that street, though, the street is surrounded by many connected buildings, like a city or town center. 

In addition to your Quaker school classmates, everyone you know was walking back with you. College professors. Ms. B. All sorts of other people whose faces you can't pick out. Still, you feel the camaraderie. They all walk with you on the path that continued onward towards life. Not to sound deep or anything. Who knows what path that will be. 

WILL YOU BECOME a published author? Throughout the process of working on this book, you've learned that sometimes, simply being in the story is enough. Writing brings back memories, and it's fun to share with others. To collect feedback, compare stories, and read comments. I guess I'm already published, in a sense. Even if it's only for Wattpad, or for future nieces and nephews and grandchildren, these stories are here to stay. 

And there is still so much to learn! 

Life has a funny way of coming full circle. It moves forward in ways you wouldn't always expect, but as life sometimes does, it will come together in a way that fits perfectly. It will be the life that's right for you. 

And then, when you get to some of these places in life, you're surprised to see that many of them are the same as in the past. These places will also shape you in some form or another. 

For example. As you drive past the Quaker school, you will be flooded with memories. And you'll do a lot of it, too, because your grandparents? They'll have found another place to live, and it's at Penn's Woods, of all places. Life will come full circle once again.

You'll look to see if anything is going on at your old school when you visit their house. One night, you'll be driving by when the upper school is performing Madagascar (you'll be so glad you didn't do that musical), but otherwise, it'll be quiet. The High Swings are gone, replaced by an outdoor classroom. There is still a tire swing hanging from the same bars, but the swing itself is new---and blue. The hill where you used to sit in middle school is quiet and seems much less steep than it used to, and the hole that students diligently worked to carve out in the fourth grade seems patched up with grass. The kindergarten room where you learned about Fuzzy Wuzzy is gone entirely, replaced by more modern classrooms. Life goes on there without you and your classmates, many of whom are now living far from home or even in the military, like Ryan. I guess having a business didn't pan out for long. 

Other places change too. Your old preschool is now a Montessori school after the former staff refused the church's demands of higher payment, and nobody ever seems to attend. The store with the Invisible Fence sign is now a barber shop, and the purple house that was visible to you on the swing set that you liked to believe belonged to an old woman who tended to a garden and set out birdfeeders is now a former home care business, which currently sits empty. Your senior year house at college has been converted to housing for adult students with kids. Your room there probably no longer exists. 

But you won't necessarily miss the love drama. Not that that love drama won't follow you. Remember that one day when you saw Ben perform at your sister's karate event, and as they walked out the side door of the auditorium, the narrator in your head was going "And then, forever, they walked though the door and out of her life!" But then that wasn't true, and you talked in college after an emailing spree, and then they friend-dumped you, and then you knew it was over for real this time? Well, not true again, because... well, it just seems like some things don't like to stay in the past.