I realized with some alarm last week that it is 2008.  This probably should have registered, oh, say, in January.  But suddenly, as I looked at the number 2008, I realized that this year was a … let’s say… noteworthy anniversary of my high school graduation.  This will undoubtedly be feted with some lavish reunion organized by those in my class who actually enjoyed high school.  All both of them.

I have only attended one reunion thus far.  It was our fifth.  I felt positive about attending because I was young, thin, married and happy.  Oh, I looked *good*, people.  I wore a white-tassel flapper dress.  Hey, it was the 80s.

After that, well… I had begun the mantra that would haunt me all the way to my late thirties: “What do I have to show for my life?”

After losing my husband, weight fluctuations, floundering with a career direction, no children, nickel-and-dime-ing my way through college… I didn’t feel like going back and reporting to my peers.  I’d had so much going for me; surely I should have accomplished something “by now.” 

I think the only person that could possibly make me feel better would be fellow classmate Linda Ayers.  Or, she could make me want to jump off a bridge.  Linda and I had so much in common that I felt like we could have been two “compare and contrast” lab rats.  We were both born on the same day, we both skipped the same grade; we were both pale, scrawny, bespeckled and tended towards nerdosity.  However, only one of us was valedictorian – and it wasn’t me.  I always thought that, eventually, I’d see Linda’s name in the news about how she’d found a cure for cancer.  Meanwhile, her potential-doppelganger was fronting a cover band and wondering why she couldn’t keep a successful relationship going.

I thought that if I ran into Linda and she was just a normal housewife with a boring job, too (not that my job now is boring, but I’ve certainly had decades of ennui), that maybe I would feel some personal acceptance of my perceived lack of output.  But that never happened.

I was still meeting with a counselor about my self-imposed “what do I have to show for it” failure obsession when the Second Act of my life started.  When that tiny cell divided inside me, my life divided into “that was then” and “this is now.”  I let all the past detritus slough away.  I had a whole new life to contend with – figuratively and literally.

If I do end up getting an invitation to a class reunion this year, I just might go.  Hello, my name is Kathleen.  And I have Something to Show For It.