Traveling back to Minnesota always gives us time to talk. Especially now, when there are no work calls or texts competing for attention. On this recent drive, “Band on the Run” by Paul McCartney and Wings came on SiriusXM. As songs often do, it carried me back. straight to warm summer afternoons at my grandmother’s cabin in the late seventies.
Smiling, I told Michael about those days. Lying in the sun on the dock. Laughing with my sisters and our friends. Talking about the future as if it were just around the corner, waiting for us to arrive as young women. As I finished, I said, almost to myself, that I really did have some good days in high school.
Breaking me out of my thoughts, Michael said, “Well, let’s focus on the good days.”
For most people, that wouldn’t be hard. Of course you focus on the good. But for someone who has spent far too much life inside her own head, trying to resolve things that may or may not have been within her power, that suggestion was easier said than done.
As a teenager, I often felt like an outsider. Uncomfortable in my own skin. Awkward. Friendships didn’t come easily for an introvert like me, and even when they did, trust was hard. And boys, well, that was a different story altogether. Proms, dances, parties. I was the girl not asked, or last asked.
But if I do focus on the good days, they are there.
Always times at the Bass Lake cabin in the summer.
Sharing secrets with my sisters to make the time pass as we walked bean rows pulling weeds for our Dad.
Working as a car hop at Kenny’s Drive-In, the popular summer hang out.
Slumber parties at our house with my sister’s and my combined group of friends.
A surprise eighteenth birthday party that was shared with my good friend John.
Excursions to the Minnesota Renaissance Festival in late August. (Picture above.)
A 21-day trip to Germany with other students after five years of German language class.
Youth group with people I will always hold fondly in my heart.
Meeting the father of my children, because they are worth everything that relationship held, both good and hard.
The list could go on. Much longer than this. And that surprises me, the grown woman who once believed she had very few good memories from high school.
So what makes those memories feel better now? Is it that time softens the harder edges? Or that those years were happier than I realized while I was living them? Maybe it just doesn’t matter. The only thing I can change now is how I hold them, what I keep, and what I release.
Michael has always chosen to remember the past with gratitude. I’ve seen how intentional that is, how it steadies him. As we drove on and song after song played, I realized I was beginning to follow his lead, loosening my grip on what was hard and making room for what was good.
At this stage of life, choosing the good days feels less like rewriting the past and more like trusting God with it.
Until Next Time,