flashback, part 60 of n

With the exception of 8th grade, during what it took me twenty-two years to figure out was my first actual bout of chronic depression, spring was always a good time for me from the onset of adolescence to the end of high school.  The odd-numbered years were always progressively better, certainly, but by and large spring was good.  It meant an end to the steady gray rain and cold.  It meant pastel colors, warmth in the afternoon and a pleasant morning cool that didn’t demand a jacket, a general green-ness to a world that had been dead and brown for months.  Sure, it meant bushel baskets of pollen, but that was never quite as bad so long as I stayed away from the billowing yellow clouds from the trees and begged off cutting the grass.

I know that spring and summer 1989 get referenced endlessly as the perfect time in my life – had my crew, had the (complicated) affections of a sweet young thing (or two, kind of), had the kind of success where you always blurt out the right answer as if by Jedi mind trick and don’t think twice.  In a way, though – and unlike 1994 or 2003 or 2006 –  I had more than just that.  In retrospect, I knew I was doing well. I wasn’t moping over the lost opportunities of the past, because there really weren’t any and they didn’t matter anyway – I wasn’t pining for the days of being the biggest dork in day care.  Nor was I dwelling endlessly on the future and pinning my hopes on getting out and taking the next step – looking forward to college?  Absolutely, but not with one foot out the door.  The future?  Hell, ten weeks away was future far enough.

In a way that took me 25 years to recognize, I was living in the moment.  I knew that I was living in an amazing time for me, I soaked it up, I cherished it, I wrung every last drop of life from it.  And I wonder if that isn’t what keeps that era resonant, a quarter-century on: I was living wide-open and flat-out and was fully present for all of it.

Of course, by the next spring, it had all gone to pieces.  I was feuding with most of my class, all my friends had graduated the year before, one of the sweet young things turned out to be a figment of my imagination while the other vanished to be replaced by a poorly-programmed clone. And the bulletproof victory streak ran out by the end of February, leaving me to coast to the finish line with an empty tank…but I didn’t care, because by that time I was looking to the future.  The present might kinda suck, but that’s fine, because come September I won’t care about high school at all.  And so I suppose in a way I did live in the moment a little, as I motored around that summer soaking in the way things had been until now, thinking it would all be different come fall.

You all know how that turned out.  It’s not much fun to live in the moment when the moment sucks out loud, and I pretty much forgot how.  Fast-forward twenty-five years.  It’s spring now.  The jacket is fully optional.  The Sperrys are out from under the foot of the bed and the socks are back in the drawer. The three new shirts are button-ups from Tommy Hilfiger, one a pink-and-white stripe and the others a mostly-white-with-pastel-plaiding. I can hear and feel the echoes across the years.

There are plenty of guys who wander around dwelling on their high school years and wishing they were that again. That’s not what I’m after.  God knows I don’t want to be 17 again, least of all in a world of living at home with no Internet or iPhone or Silicon Valley money.  But if I could get my head back to thinking how I did in high school, living not like I did but how I did…that wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, would it?