Remembering Kansas

I think I am turning into an old lady.

I can come up with no other reason, because I have become this sentimental glob of goo.

My high school days were some of the best times and filled with some of the most memorable people.
However, when I think back to my youth (I am 35...I can say "youth" now, can't I? How old does a person have to be before they can say that with a straigh face?), I am not drawn to the dances with future ex-girlfriends (and future ex-wife) or plays I held minor roles in. I don't recall (at least instantly) the pen fights in the hall or the way we all felt so old and mature when we became seniors.


My mind, at first, goes back to Kansas.

It is the place I call "Home."


With the help of Facebook, I have had the great honor of finding some very dear friends I had when I lived in Topeka.
I have been able to chat (sometimes for hours) with people who I thought were gone from my life forever. While I can see the new and grown up faces of the people I went to school with, I lose sight of them and become a child again. In my mind, they do too.

I am no longer talking to the Heather Denman, it is Heather Koster...the girl I would spend hours on the phone with, talking about the most obscure and irrelevant of things (which were sooooooo very important back then). I can almost see, in her typing, the curved and bubble script she used to write notes to me in.

I am shooting the shit with Matt, my bench-warming buddy. He is the young boy who was my friend, my pal, many years away from becoming the good man he is now or the loving father of two beautiful little girls.

I picture Misty as the curious yet stubborn girl, not the nurse, I used to joke around with and who also wrote me when I lived in Florida. Although younger than me, we became very close.

I see Mr. V...sitting at the front of the class, humming the tune to the hymn we would sing. He wanted to make sure we got it just right. I hear the stern way he called to us from the sidelines of the soccer field (I was a starter in Soccer, thank you very much.), only doing so to make sure we did our best...knowing we could do better. He was such a good man and I fear, mourn, that I only gave him grief.

I only mention these four, because I have had the most contact with them. I do not leave anyone out because i am over-looking them or do not value having them as friends. I am so amazingly greatful for all of them.


I say all of this to make a point.
I think we often forget the years before high school. High school is where we see the sproutings of the adults we will become, but those seeds are planted much further back. As any gardener knows, it takes just the right environment for a flowers and plants of all types to grow.

I was given that environment in Topeka Lutheran School. It was the perfect micro-ecosystem. I would not change a thing.

Although, they may never read this (which is fine), I needed to thank all of my friends for remembering me and still wanting to talk. It means more than you will ever know. The greatest fear I have, maybe the only, is that I will be forgotten.

I am sure some of my childhood friends are gone for good.
Such is life.
It changes nothing.
Thank you, to all of you.
"May God bless you and keep you and may His face shine upon you...and give you peace."

It is just something I had to say...