Day 85.

Over 50 years have passed since my quest began. For those who know me, I am twice the man I used to be, and I have the scales to prove it! As my horizon has broadened, so has my waistline. Even my body has become a sign of the times – my hairline is in recession and my waistline is suffering from inflation. It is not hard to tell when I am on the level, because I have the bubble in the middle.

Let me reflect on one of the memories in the gallery of my mind. My life was in disarray and I had flown back to NZ for and school reunion. I was seeking refreshment but know the dryness of the moment still causes me to reflect 21 years later. A school reunion is meant to be a time when you can reconnect with the past and fill in the missing gaps. During this time of turmoil and change I was looking for solace not emptiness. I had this hope of finding old friends, school mates and ex-girlfriends, and sharing our glorious history. I looked forward to connecting the missing years and felt that this somehow would lift my spirit, but none of them showed up! There were hundreds of people there, many I knew, but none of my old friends!

The sorrow of that excursion still gnaws at me. I tried to track some of them using my old phone book. As I phoned some of the old numbers, I found their parents still living at the old addresses. Brian was a lawyer in London. Philip also was overseas also. Warren could not be traced. Marilynn Bockett who had been my first love in Std 4 (grade 6) and had moved away was unknown by anyone as I asked around. Isabel was back in Australia where I had just come from. I rang her parents and got her number in Mussel Brook NSW. A blast from the past she called it. She had been my year 12 girlfriend and I show our photo to my students when I give my testimony. Others were untraceable. Their parents had either died or moved. I was so sad! So disappointed.

Now, 21 years on, searching the memories of the past of the people and their stories, I began to realize that my mind had a time-warped after-image photo album that contained snippets of people’s lives as they crossed mine and we shared “the journey” for a while. I discovered that people usually stand out in your mind for some enduring quality. I remembered people by the qualities of their character and that is what constitutes a snapshot in my hall of memories. This was not just from my childhood and teen-age years, but also from the churches I had pastored over the decades. This person was kind, that one was funny, another was caring. This one was hostile, and the memories added up. I still remember the unrequited love of Clair. Her memory hangs surreal, a huge teenage snapshot. She had an older boyfriend but that didn’t stop me from loving her and writing poetry about her. How did her life turn out? Is she even still alive? Tony was the school gangster; did he ever go to jail like I thought he would? He was a bully. Once he tried to stuff hot chili in my mouth and because I went into a defensive crouch, he accidentally stuffed it in my eye instead. I was always afraid of him, what was he like now?

I went to a state senior school (year 8-12) with 1600 students and bullying was a fact of life. It taught me resilience. I was small, 3’ 11 inches in the old scale in Year 8 (That’s 119cm). I was also cheeky and so would find myself hanging on coat hooks by my belt, or get my head flushed down the toilet. Now that was all memories and it bothered me that I couldn’t fill in the gaps. Tomorrow I will share one of my favourite stories.