So I get a message over a month ago from a friend I hadn't seen since 1983:"Hey Morgan, I love you photos I've seen on Facebook. Would you do our son's senior pictures?"
Tracey, Rick & I were in band @ Kokomo High School. We had probably marched, bused, and hung out for literally hundreds of hours. But like so many high school relationships, I don't think we'd seen each other since the night in May when I graduated.
Rick & Tracey started dating the summer before their junior year and never stopped. They married in college, found a job and life has taken them to Minnesota.
So here we were again. The three of us. Looking over at the marching field we'd lived on 27 years earlier. And there was their handsome son, Matt; the same age as we were when we'd last seen each other.
No other experience to date has given me the sensation of time travel as this. It was eerily and yet warmly profound.
Hair color and hair lines different. Everyone would now wrestle in a heavier weight class. But the eyes...they don't change. Remembrances make eyes dance in the same way they did 27 years ago. But still...our eyes revealed the wisdom and experiences of our mid-fortied lives.
During the shoot I couldn't shake the odd sensation of it all. As if I'd driven to meet them in a flux-capacitor-driven DeLorean. Physically it was different. Relationally it was the same. And I think we all felt the sense of how unique and fun the moment was.
A few days later we sat at Starbucks as I handed over the photo discs. We talked for two hours (to poor Matt's dismay). Words came easily and smiles followed. For people the same age with kids of like ages there seems no end to the commonality.
And I have to say that Rick and Tracey are good people. They always were. I can tell they still are and they've raised two more good people in Matt & Samantha. As I sat with them I was reminded of the gift that good people are.
I asked Tracey, "So what have you learned?"
She paused and said simply, "What haven't I learned?"
Rick turned the question back on me. I thought for a second and said, "That everything I thought was important when I was Matt's age isn't important...perhaps that nothing's more important than humility...and that it really is all about relationships..."
And as I said those words I knew this was one of those special moments that really was all about relationships. Special that even though we'd been separated by 27 years of life, we could pickup and not be in those awkward moments caught fishing for words.
Life is unpredictable; old friends, comforting. And God winds through it all.
Here's to time machine photo shoots. (drink)
