More Doors

Last week, I saw a girl who used to work for me, back in the nineties. She was the first of my "crew" who really was young enough to be my daughter. She was seventeen…I was thirty-seven. The first time in my life that I didn’t just FEEL old. I WAS old.

She showed up at the festival Thursday morning with her four-year-old and two-year-old in tow. Full of news of her little family, and of the other girls of the crew. She mentioned casually that she had turned thirty…and I shared that I had just celebrated my big 5-0. I realized that what sucks about being fifty is that, twenty years ago, I was thirty. Already old. Twenty years ago.

I used to hear from my girls several times a year. Then, it was just Christmas and special occasions. It has deteriorated to one time a year, when I am doing the festival and they know where to find me. Each time, there is less to say. Less to share to which the other person could relate. I brought up my blog…to which she asked with a bemused smile, "What’s a blog?" Finally, we have migrated to totally different worlds. I felt that door closing…

…And another opening. Today, my email had a message from someone I had never heard of, through "Classmates.com." In five years, the only people who have contacted me through "Classmates" have been looking for the other Baldwins in the yearbook. I could have deleted the email. Was about to, in fact. But I changed my mind and clicked on the link that took me to the message. Turns out it was from a friend from the old neighborhood—one of my bridesmaids, no less. Someone who I had wished to find, found me. I wrote back. Opening the door to a world of memories fifteen, twenty years older than the ones I closed the book on a couple of days ago. The world turns, the clock turns, sometimes forward, sometimes back. Sometimes both directions at once.