A Drive-By Memory

On revisiting the places that shaped me

Hello Readers!

(I found Michael’s yearbooks in his childhood bedroom. He’s the 8th grade cutie second from the right)

This week I’m staying at my mother-in-law’s house for a few days, so I’m writing from her back deck where I have spent countless hours over the last 33 years. Michael and I began dating when I was 17 and we only lived fifteen minutes apart, so his family home has been as much a home to me as my own since I was a teenager. We’ve known each other since I was in Mrs. Krupp’s third grade class, and he was in Miss Kaiser’s fifth grade across the hall from me.

This summer we learned that the tiny school where we met was in such a state of disrepair that it was being torn down. My first response was “how sad”, and I promptly forgot about it until I saw a former student sharing photos online of the building in various stages of demolition. Other former students shared memories and photos from their time, and I moved from a “how sad” state to real grief over the loss as their stories resurrected my own.

Behind those cinderblock walls and locker-lined halls lived my childhood. Six years’ worth of memories still echoed in those rooms before they became piles of debris. It was the most formational experience of my life, and yet I hadn’t thought about it in years. Our school was one of the places that molded me into being.

In those classrooms I was nurtured as a budding artist. I memorized scripture and performed in my first play. I combed the library stacks looking for books to borrow and lived for the fall and spring Scholastic Book Fairs. In those classrooms, I was seen, affirmed, and encouraged. It’s where I met my best friend Elizabeth and held hands with my eight grade boyfriend Richie. And most importantly, it’s where my future found me—I met Michael Coyle—father of my children and the boy whose voice I can still hear from across the hallway joking with his buddies, ignoring me and every other girl in the grades below him.