Memories in hindsight

This weekend I spent a lot of time thinking about memories and go through my old memories. Last week my students were asking me about the friends that I have in my life that have played an important role in my life. I talked to them about people from Erika, Doug, and Elizabeth from high school to my college roommates and friends. They then asked me how I met the different people. It made me laugh to remember all the different ways I met these important people in my life. I even contacted a bunch of them to see if they remembered because for me they brought up so many fond and good memories. One of my friends told a different story then I remember for when we first met, this made me want to see if I could find the truth. So I started to go through my old journals to try and find the answer and I received a HUGE SHOCK!!! This meeting was never in my journals. In fact, I enjoyed going through my journals and reliving things so much I read pretty much all my journals from 2004 to present and I continued to be shocked by the things I spent pages talking about and detailing and the things I neglected to record. I guess it is all about hindsight but I feel like some of the most important moments in my life were the ones that I skipped whereas I covered some of the most boring and stupid things.

It isn't amazing that at the time we are going through something it seems like the biggest deal in the world. I also found it hysterical how many boys I have been in love with and stated, I have never felt like this before and all of them are nothing to me now. I thought I had grown up by the time I was 23 but those statements and entries show a whole different story. I think about how time and perspective have taught me a lot of important lessons and though I still can get caught up in some of the mundane things I also realize what I want in my journal. More about the important people that forever changed my life, for example I have already rectified one of my friends and added the how we met story and I plan on doing that for more, also adding how I felt when Erika died and how I still feel about that (it needs to be recorded), and I also realize that the biggest thing missing from my journals is stories of my students. Every day they make me laugh and I am honored to be able to associate with them but they are also missing from most of the journals. I need to take more time to remember the reasons I love teaching and to relate the stories of being a modern day school marm (I love that word, it was used in the 1800s for the school teacher in the one room schoolhouse) and enjoy the laughs they bring to me.