Life's backpack

When I went to Vietnam with two years ago and journeyed to Sapa, we walked to a homestay. Walk is hardly the words, we mountain goated up and down hills, rocks, roads, rice fields, water buffalo paths etc. while carrying my camera and a backpack. Thinking it was going to be cold, I carried warm clothing but no bathing suit. We didn’t need the warm stuff but I took a bath in a warm spring cistern in my underwear. A cold beer never tasted better and whatever we ate was the best food I ever had. Ok that was an exaggeration, but it was great for the space. When I was getting ready for my sleep on the floor at the home, I looked in my pack and thought what I was thinking? Not only was the walk long and at points difficult, but it was hot and tiring and carrying this load of stuff I didn’t need added to the exhaustion. Going to this reunion this weekend and saying goodbye to my editor this week, had brought me to a point of looking in my pack to see what I am carrying. There were folks in my college class that I admired and learned from and there were folks that thought they were important and I gave little thought to as well as some folks that just did their thing and really did not need my awareness or approval. I was much more of a under the radar person. I wasn’t “smart” or got good grades and I was more attached to the leaders than a leader. In the long run, I am not sure they were too attached to me. Women who were grade school chums and then when to high school and college and married and raised kids together, have not venture too far from the roots. I don’t think anyone knew who I struggled to read and write. I “worked” for the Dean of Students. She was at this event and looked right through me.. I must have really impressed her but then I am not around and am not a contributor.


When we did our undergrad theses, I did the math part... etc. In the end, they really didn’t know me and I could not relate to the quest to hunt and seek the life mate. Several of the women were dating their future spouses.. the doctor, lawyer and Indian chief, while maintaining a “friend with benefits”.

When I sat with one of the smart quiet ones at this gathering, the other vegetarian, she said, how she didn’t feel connected. Her public high school guidance counselor had helped her get there and now she has a PhD. Most of my classmates, like myself, went to private schools so she was “different” from the start. When we graduated, she said, everyone was getting married and by the time she was 25 she thought everyone had married and moved on with a husband. That was very true of “my group”. The last classmate I saw was Lovey Driscoll in the hospital with a jaundice baby... she did not attend the gathering, but wasn’t on the dead list so who knows. My PhD classmate wed at 29 and I .. well that would be another story. What I thought about in the end, how much stuff I had put in my backpack to carry for such a long time. How important it was to be accepted then.. and how important it is to be real now. When and where had it changed. I have no idea why I went to this event, glad I did.

I was a “wantabe” English major. I wanted to be a journalist or a poet. So at one time, I submitted some writing to a journal under another name and it was accepted and published. Wow and now I just write and hope the spell check picks up the errors or my wonderful editor puts the tenses in place.. .. and if it doesn’t happen.. oh well.. ..I am not carrying a dictionary in my backpack.