I am cleaning out my house today. Opening the craft closet has become an adventure, and I’m having hard time “walking” in my walk-in closet if you catch my drift. So, I’m de-stuffing. We keep so much more than we need, don’t we?
I don’t think people think of me as an overly sentimental person, but I really kind of am. Fortunately, the majority of my attachments are to small things – notes and pictures mostly, with an occasional palm-sized trinket thrown into the mix. I don’t even know why I’ve kept some of the things I have, but they’ve been with me so long now that I have memories of saving them even if I can’t remember why, so I just keep on keeping ’em. So my point… if you want to call it that… is that I’ve been adding a few new momentos to my boxes, and I just stumbled across a picture from my freshman year of college.

It’s of me and my “big sister” and her “big sister” and her “big sister” on my Big/Little reveal day in our sorority. Something about seeing the photo made me long for that day. Does that ever happen to you? I mean, I don’t want to relive college. And I don’t want to have to go back to the dorm room that was my home that year, but when I saw the picture, something inside of me remembers the moment so clearly, can so vividly recall nearly every event that followed that it made me – just for a moment, mind you – wish I was there again with those girls.

There was something about the newness of the friendships, the way I didn’t know their faults yet and they didn’t know mine, the age difference that was so prominent then, the laziness of days in a small college town with nothing of any real importance at stake. We were so young. Two of them were seniors this year that I was a freshman, and I looked up to them so much. Looking at the photo, I realize they were three years younger than I am now. But none of us knew then what it felt like to be 25. In that moment, I was the baby at 19, and they, at 22, were old and wise.

We’ve all kept in touch, and I still count them close friends. In nearly every way but proximity I am much closer to them now than I was that afternoon. So I don’t miss them as friends, but in a strange way, I was wishing for those friendships. The way I imagine a mother might miss her infant even while enjoying the child she has grown into.

Memories and friendships are strange, don’t you think? But powerful and tender and dear, too.

…Perhaps some phone calls to some “old” (I’m still the baby!) friends are in order…