{"id":462,"date":"2010-10-04T09:29:02","date_gmt":"2010-10-04T13:29:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.old.caraghobrien.com\/book\/?p=462"},"modified":"2010-10-04T14:28:38","modified_gmt":"2010-10-04T18:28:38","slug":"time-tripping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/miscellaneous\/time-tripping\/","title":{"rendered":"Time-Tripping"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

7th grade at SPA\/SS<\/p><\/div>\n

An English teacher from my old school, SPA, invited me back to talk to seventh graders last Friday.\u00a0 In theory, I was providing a segue into their unit on The Giver<\/em>, and we did indeed discuss dystopias and do a bit of writing, but also, the visit exposed me to one of those odd time-travel trips.\u00a0 What\u2019s the difference, really, between me talking as an adult guest and me sitting in one of the chairs at age twelve, happy to have a visitor breaking up the routine?\u00a0 Only years.\u00a0 I could so easily be either version of myself.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Alumnas<\/p><\/div>\n

The sense of time-travel was compounded because my trip to Minnesota also coincided with my thirtieth reunion.\u00a0 I am not a backward-looking person and was not aware of any need for a sense of healing about high school, but when I sat around a table with twenty other alumnas from SPA and saw one familiar face after another, a powerful connection of caring and generosity was tangible, and lovely.\u00a0 How strange to discover a small part of me still longed for acceptance and inclusion with the other girls who now admitted they had been insecure and self-protective, too.\u00a0 How sweet to forgive the younger versions of ourselves for residual slights and disappointments.\u00a0 What very cool people they\u2019ve turned out to be.\u00a0 Dare I believe it?\u00a0 I have friends.\u00a0 Girl friends.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Attic Bedroom Sorting Fun<\/p><\/div>\n

Finally, I cleared the last of my stuff out of my old attic bedroom in my mother\u2019s house.\u00a0 There were drawers under the eaves that had been inaccessible for decades because my father had built his train set on plywood tables before them.\u00a0 Apparently, as a teenager and college student, I saved every scrap of my homework, every notebook, and every incomplete crewelwork project.\u00a0 I culled hundreds of letters down to three shoe-box-fulls and recycled the rest, skimming for familiar hand-writing when it became too slow to open each envelope.\u00a0 I came home with a suitcase of stuff to store in my own attic, and the embarrassment of still having stuff in my mom\u2019s attic is mercifully over.<\/p>\n

It is a relief to be back in the present again, on my couch, writing, but I have a gentler understanding of my old self, and I\u2019d like to think if we ever met, we\u2019d be friends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An English teacher from my old school, SPA, invited me back to talk to seventh graders last Friday.\u00a0 In theory, I was providing a segue into their unit on The Giver, and we did indeed discuss dystopias and do a bit of writing, but also, the visit exposed me to one of those odd time-travel […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=462"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":470,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462\/revisions\/470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}