Flashbacks To Past
by BARBARA DICKINSON

The lake before me is murky, still and undeniably cold. I am 9 years old. My chubby knees are knocking so hard I’m convinced they will cause me to slip off the dock where I am standing, paralyzed except for my knees, waiting for the instructor to yell Dive!

I am 22, listening for the college president to call my name, alphabetically after McIlhany, when I’ll step forward to clutch my college diploma after four long years.

At 23, I am waving from the deck of the SS Maasdam, lying at anchor in Hoboken, N. J. My mother and an old beau are among the ant-like specks I see returning my wave from the dock.

I am 26 and trembling next to my late father as the organist begins Here Comes the Bride.

Such are some of the moments of greatest anticipation in my life up to this moment. At each of those events I can remember the heart-pounding, shivery feeling from head to toe as I took off in a new direction. Diving was, and is to this day, a fearful, gosh-awful experience. The other occasions I’ve revisited were pure heaven.

I am beginning to enter a two-month period of continuous and joyful anticipation.

In about one week’s time I return to my alma mater for my 50th college reunion. A half-century! It is hard to believe that I was a beanie-wearing green freshman 50 years ago. Eisenhower was in the White House; air travel was just beginning to be the norm, the Korean War was calling all of our male acquaintances. Computers were non-existent, and gasoline was probably 12 cents a gallon (if that). In retrospect, life was fairly simple, especially for a young girl from Annandale, Virginia, up North for the first time in her life. (And how Annandale has changed in 50 years; it is now a virtual bedroom of Washington, D.C.)

I am excited almost to the point of intoxication about returning for my reunion. Although not the first time I’ve been back, it will probably be the most meaningful. Our campus is beautiful, and multi-million dollar campaigns have added valleys, dells, student centers, new classrooms, underground parking and a zillion more perks than when I matriculated there. It will be fascinating to navigate the new and revisit the old.

A sentimental journey, if you will.

But the great attraction, of course, is the multitude of friends who will gather. Will we recognize one another? Who has morphed into a ravishing butterfly? Who has withdrawn to become a shy, quiet mouse? Among my 400-plus living classmates are college presidents (and wives of college presidents), corporate execs, renowned doctors, famous authors, philanthropic mavens and diplomats who have served in far and dangerous corners of the earth. And equally as many have had meaningful, if less glamorous lives, as wives, mothers, sisters, and lovers in this changing world. I know many have retired (after all, we are septuagenarians), but others are still working full speed.

I look forward to talking to women whom I knew slightly years ago but whose lives have been so different from my own. I am eager to hear of their experiences; will they want to know where Iíve been or what Iíve been doing? The prospect of the whole event is both stimulating and scary.

I will head north as an empty vessel, anticipating the exuberance of it all and looking forward to filling up with newness and hope.

Did I reveal that I have TWO months of anticipation ahead of me? July heralds additions to my role as Grandmother; two new grandbabies are scheduled to arrive.

Hopefully, the Stork Patrol will add another carrier to its fleet. One infant is due in Tennessee on July 1 and the other in Atlanta on July 1.

Both the stork and I shall be busy birds!

Barbara Dickinson is a Roanoke novelist and freelance writer.