Katie Noah Gibson is a writer living in Abilene, Texas. She also teaches English at a local university, and blogs at http://katieleigh.wordpress.com.
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It Does Matter
One afternoon last fall, I spent a long while chatting online with two old friends. I’ve known Jon since fifth grade (15 years) and Adam since seventh (13 years), which means we’ve known one another for more of our lives than we haven’t. Whenever I chat with Adam, we inevitably begin reminiscing about high school, when we were part of a close-knit group of friends. His little sister, Grace, is now a sophomore (though I think she should still be about seven), and we both paused to reflect on, and be amazed by, the fact that our sophomore year was ten years ago.
Ten years seems like such a long time when you view it as a chunk – and for me, at age 26, it’s more than a third of my life. Ten years ago, I had just gotten my driver’s license; I was in high school marching band and loving it. I had long hair and bangs and a pink-painted bedroom; I had a crush on a senior baritone player, but he hadn’t noticed me (yet). I had a brand-new purple letter jacket and drove a little indigo Kia Sephia; I spent my days going to English and chemistry and world history and algebra classes. I was anticipating going to London for the first time, with my high school band. And I’m sure I heard at least once from my mom and other adults, “This [situation or relationship or event] won’t matter to you in ten years.”
Now, I am married with two advanced degrees (and lots of foreign travel) under my belt. I have short hair and a writing career and a much more developed fashion sense. I don’t talk to a lot of my high school friends much any more, and I have vastly different views on life and faith and nearly everything else than I did at 16. However, I don’t believe – I can’t believe – that those old memories and relationships don’t matter. (Some smaller things, it’s true, have fallen by the wayside – and the arguments that once seemed capable of ending friendships have passed into oblivion.) But I firmly believe that the other stuff – the stuff that was important to begin with – still matters.
What is that stuff? There’s a lot of it – perhaps too much to contain in a single list, and even a few items would take days to fully explain. But it’s the long drives in Adam’s white truck and Jon’s green Grand Am, listening to Broadway music and a folksy singer-songwriter called Ross King. It’s the hard-fought football games, and dancing with my friends in the flute section while the drum line played cadences in the stands. It’s the nights of teetering in high heels at formal dances, feeling so grown-up and snapping photos with my best friends. It’s the band trips and endless relationship drama and the Bible studies on Tuesday nights. It’s the birthday parties, the long talks at the coffee shop, the stupid things we did and the crazy things we said and the way my tightly knit posse of friends fiercely loved each other. It’s all the big exciting events, and the normal days in between, walking from class to class down the long, color-coded halls of Midland High.
As we chatted about high school, Adam admitted, “I can’t ever tell Grace that this stuff won’t matter to her in ten years.” And I said, “You’re right. It still does matter. It matters a lot.”
When I talk to old friends and we reminisce; when I go home for Christmas and get to hug them; when I find old mementoes or photos or randomly run into a memory, I am reminded: it does matter. Those days and events and people helped make me who I am, and they are still part of me.
That said, the last ten years have been the scariest, most exciting, most adventurous years of my life. I’m a long way at 26 from where – and who – I was at 16. (That’s as it should be.) But talking to old friends pulls me back to who I used to be. And it reminds me that it did – and does – all matter.
I am deeply thankful for the friends who have hung in there with me for the last decade or more, who know my past and present selves and love them both. We did the slow work of growing up together; we remember who the others used to be. And I believe that’s still important, even ten years on the other side.
essay by katie noah gibson, all rights reserved
