I was so much something then ...

It's often the case that I don't connected with my childhood. Not that there was anything grave to forget. If anything, I remember a lot of fine times - hanging around at the camp, visiting at my aunt and uncle's in Vermont, another uncle taking me to see Ted Williams play at Fenway Park, talking with friends at school and after, visiting with my grandparents every day after school. (I'd get off of the school bus and go next door for coffee and pastries.) There's also that stretch from my mid-teens to my mid-twenties when, through no fault of my own, I was lucky to be alive. It wasn't (and, to a large extent, isn't) easy to understand how what went on then led to who I am as an adult.
In the past 10 or 20 years, starting when my father gave us the camp and accelerating through the times of the deaths of my mother and father, the importance has shifted from understanding to remembering. For example, as we readied  my father's house for sale, it was fun to discover that the cousin of the guy installing the gas stove is married to the young of two brothers who came to our school from Finland, that the older brother threw a heckuva javelin, and that the younger brother's nickname was the Finnish word for fish eye. Just remembering the people and stories was meaning enough.
Recently, I went to my high school reunion. Some 45 of my classmates showed up, not bad for a class of about 100. As with most gatherings, there were people who were nicer than I'd expected and others not so much. I was probably impolite or distant to other people and didn't know it. You can't undo decades of self-centeredness in one evening. (The recent episode of 30 Rock, where Liz attends her reunion, rang awfully true.) We didn't have name tags, so I spent a fair bit of time talking with people whom I didn't know, but should have.
At the reunion, we were, as a lot, grayer, heavier, and less certain about a lot of stuff. We fumbled around, trying to sum up our lives in a few cogent sentences. In many cases, we'd finished what we'd done and were now retired.
People asked me what I did for work. I gave the short answer, "Computers."
"That doesn't surprise me," said one classmate.
Hmm. It surprised me. I didn't do any work with computers until I was in my 30s and then it was by accident. (I took a job as a proofreader. There were a couple of terminals hooked up to different computer systems in my office. They let me play. I kept playing.)
So, this person saw a direct path from the kid I was in high school to worker I became. I looked back and saw no such direct path, but, rather, a serendipitous journey. Who has the better understanding of what happened?
There's one good friend, Ken, with whom I've stayed in something like regular contact. We sat together and talked about stuff past and present. He's worked for GE for many years. They're finishing their last nuclear submarine. When the sub is done, they'll close the plant. After that, well, who knows? Ken's a resourceful guy.
He and I sat at the table and talked about hearing loss. At least, that's what I thought we were talking about. We were also stunned to realize that our friend, Don, will have been gone six years this coming February. I told the story of Don and I riding our bicycles on the newly paved, but not open to the public, section of Route 2 between Gardner and Westminster. We were 12 or so. The world was wide open.
The people who organized the reunion put up old pictures from first grade onward. There was a special display for our classmates who had died, one as recently as two weeks ago. One woman died back in the 70s, about the same time and place I was crawling out of my own wreckage. It's a keen reminder, as with Don, that there are people who are smarter, kinder, and, well, better than me who didn't make it. Kinda takes your breath away.
I only stayed a couple of hours, itself something of a miracle. I've been thinking a lot about the reunion since then, the people I saw, the people who didn't come, the people who've gone on. When I got home, I flipped through my yearbook. It's an intriguing exercise, to look at a young person and try to see the adult or to look at an adult and try to see the child. It's like driving forward while looking in the rear-view mirror or backing up while staring out the windshield. It's a miracle that we don't have more accidents than we do.