What happened? We ran into a couple of old friends.

I know I'm supposed to leave the past behind me and concentrate on being present in the moment, but that gets kind of hard when the past keeps smacking me upside the head. Recently I've reconnected with two people that I knew in grade school who reappeared in my life in completely random ways.

My mother called me on Wednesday and asked, "Did you know a boy named J- in high school?" Did I know him??? He was my first grade boyfriend. He sent me love notes for a year when we were 6 and after that we drifted apart, but we went to school together for 12 years, so the answer is yes, I did know him. And why is she asking? Because J- now does sales for an internet publisher and he pitched my mother on Tuesday. She gave me his email (and was really not subtle about her motives). So I emailed him a short, innocuous note and he wrote back, saying he was living in NY with his wife and loved his job. Sorry mom--no Nicholas Sparks ending for me on that one.

Then, at my first ballroom dance class last month, I bumped into M, a girl I knew in high school but whom I hadn't seen since we saw each other at a crew regatta during college. We've hung out a few times and I am very glad to have her in my life again. We are in very similar places and situations, and our similarity of thought can get downright eerie sometimes. Tonight we met for dinner and ended up sitting at Starbucks and dishing about the people we knew and hated in high school.

I won't even get into the bizarre conversation I had with my ex ex ex boyfriend's mother when we sat next to each other at a restaurant right before New Years.

I don't think the past can ever be left completely behind. We live with it every day, processing it and pondering it and sometimes reliving it when we haven't learned the lessons we need to learn from our experiences. The difference lies in whether we are determined to live NOW rather than live in memories, and if we decide to learn from the past rather than bury it like a bloody trophy of war. The past can really only bite us in the ass if we never accept the fact that the best is yet to come. Maybe it's the wine talking. Or maybe I'm just being too naively optimistic.