It's All About...Going Home Again

Since I haven’t written in over 2 weeks (Where did the time go?!), I have a few events and entries to catch up on.

Last weekend, K & K and I went back to Concord for Homecoming. We pulled into town as the parade was getting underway, and we cruised into the Middle School parking lot (amid much deja vu) and ran to the road to make sure Kaelyn could see everything. The band was marching and it was cool to see people I knew marching at the back of the group.

On the American Legion buggy, the woman was a high school teacher when I was in school, and the guy was a year ahead of me:

The rest of the parade was fun, seeing flashes of people we knew. There were people there from the church we went to while growing up, and people from the old neighborhood. My sister and I spent a lot of time subtly poking each other and whispering familiar names from our past. And then there were the floats and groups and teams that seemed familiar just because they're in every parade, everywhere:

At the end of the parade, we met up with my high school classmate Susan, her husband, Robert, and their lovely daughter. (Susan, we really do need to get together soon...I'll try to call this week!) We wandered into the area around the football field and mingled and talked and exclaimed and chuckled all evening. My niece and their daughter made fast friends:

As you can tell from this shot below, Concord is still trying to field a marching band with under 30 people. When I was a high school senior, they made us march with 13. It was humiliating! I will say, though, that the band sounded great in the parade -- I could hardly hear them at halftime from where we were standing at the end of the field. One of my high school friends had been the substitute band director since the beginning of the year, and she really did a good job:

Homecoming, however, was not so good for the football team. Despite a couple of really exciting plays (and to be perfectly honest, I only watched a couple of plays), the visiting team trounced my alma mater with a final score of 34-59.

You know, it was fun going back. It's interesting to think about who I am now, as compared to who I was when I lived there. I have a completely different view of the world. But it's neat to know what helped to shape so much of my world view, and to be able to revisit it.

OK...on to writing the next post...