When Past and Present Share a Table

A reunion, a birthday, and a time capsule. What nostalgia says still matters.

If you could go back to a moment or a season of your life, where would you go — and why?

I’ve been sitting with that question. Not just in the abstract, but in the real, messy, beautiful way life asks it. How it invites you to notice what still pulls at you.

For me, the invitation came through a move, through loss, through reminiscing with family members in the Ozark town that once held my childhood summers.

At first, I thought maybe I was just feeling nostalgic. But it turned out to be more like a kind of functional time travel. Or a form of retrieval.

Not indulgence. Not escape. More like integration.

A way of gathering what I didn’t know I’d left behind.

A way of letting the past whisper what still matters.

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A couple weekends ago, I went to my 30th high school reunion.

Four of us met up at a renovated Airbnb on Main Street — the same stretch we used to cruise in our first cars, windows down, music up, feeling half-invincible. The building had been beautifully restored with modern fixtures and thoughtful touches, but the familiar road outside brought everything rushing back. Who we were. How it felt.

Jafferty was the first to greet me. She wrapped me in a hug that collapsed the time and distance between us. No performance. No pretense. Just a warm, grounding gladness.

Then Angie and Cynthia.

The four of us caught up in the Airbnb’s living room, drinks in hand, voices overlapping with laughter and memory. We were older, but something about being together made it easy to slip back into a rhythm. Not to rehash high school. We held that lightly. But to fill in gaps. Notice what stuck and what faded.

When we arrived at the larger event and folded into the rest of the group, I felt it immediately: no one had anything to prove. Thirty years is long enough for life to humble you.

Most faces I recognized in an instant. A few I had to study for a second before the name caught up. But it all felt easy. Familiar.

There’s a kind of magic in seeing people who knew you before you knew yourself.

It felt like our inner children were seeing each other again — playful, wide-eyed, helping each other remember the lost details of shared scenes. Laughing at how much we’d forgotten — and what we hadn’t.

It’s strange to feel 48 on the outside and 16 on the inside. To sit across from someone you used to cheer with or pass notes to in class, and now you’re swapping stories about marrying your sweetheart, having college-aged kids, getting divorced, or running the liquor store you bought.

At one point, I looked around and felt it settle in me like a soft awe:

The lives we’ve each lived.

The people we’ve loved.

The questions we used to carry.

So many of those questions have since been answered — not all, but enough to feel the passage of time in our bones.

Some of us left town. Others stayed. Some became nurses, teachers, mechanics, cops. Some raised families. Some lost their parents. Somehow, we all found our roles to play after high school. After the script ran out.

And still, there we were.

Past and present, sitting at the same table.

I could’ve stayed all night.

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After the reunion events, I celebrated my dad’s birthday with a small family gathering over BBQ brisket, cake and ice cream. Then, at his request, we pulled out a deck of reflective question cards.

There’s nothing fancy about the cards. A friend gifted them to us last year, and I’ve since added a few of my own prompts. But they have a way of cutting through the usual topics. They invite just enough depth to draw something real to the surface.

One by one, we went around the room, answering questions like:

What’s the bravest thing you’ve ever done?

What’s your superpower?

What’s the best thing anyone’s ever done for you?

The answers were sometimes funny or tender. Connective.

When Dad shared that he believed his superpower was “making people feel welcome and included,” my heart both ached and expanded.

Of course it was true. But it was something special about hearing him name it.

I found myself thinking: What would the world be like with more men like that?

Men whose quiet power comes from warmth.

Men who know how to make a room feel safe just by being in it.

It’s a gift. And one I’m profoundly grateful to have experienced firsthand.

My uncle Larry’s answer to the “bravest thing” surprised all of us, except my aunt, who gently nudged him to share it. We’ve been doing family gatherings for decades, and still, there are stories we’ve never heard. Experiences held close for years. That kind of reveal doesn’t happen often. But when it does, it stays with you.

There was lightness, too. A thread about fear — about the things that once loomed large.

My stepmom Marsha recalled being terrified to jump off the high dive at the town pool.

I shared about a cliff at an alpine lake that made me tremble.

And yet, both of us jumped.

There was an unspoken metaphor in that. The way fear rises up just before the leap.

That’s the thing about storytelling like this. You think you’re just playing a game of questions. But what you’re really doing is tending to your stories.

Of who you are.

Of who you’ve been.

Of what matters enough to remember.

Dad was content. He listened to each of us like he was soaking it in.

And I thought about how lucky I am to share these kinds of moments.

How rare.

How numbered.

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A couple days later, Marsha brought her time capsule into the living room.

She was looking for a specific photo, but once the box was open, she was on a multi-hour journey.

The box had lived in their basement — making every move, always finding a place on a shelf. Waiting.

Inside were scrapbooks, school photos, a cheerleading letter, pins, and school spirit ribbons — artifacts from junior high, high school, college. Aspects of her former selves, preserved in paper and fabric.

She unfolded a letter from her mother, written from the hospital after giving birth to Marsha’s younger sister. Ten days in the hospital was the norm back then.

Some things change.

Later, we looked at a photo of Marsha as a little girl hugging her cocker spaniel.

She still hugs her cocker spaniels every day.

Some things don’t change.

She smiled as she sorted through it all. No regrets. Just joy. Gratitude. A reverence for the life she’s lived — and the love that’s held it.

At one point, she expressed wishing she could remember every moment of her life.

And I thought: This is the next best thing.

You save what you can.

You write it down.

You tuck it in a box, or a drawer, or the back of your mind.

And someday, you pull it out, hold it up to the light — and let it speak.

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It’s easy to view these as moments of remembrance. But I see them more like rituals of retrieval.

Ways of remembering what was true, beautiful, and essential, so you can carry it forward.

It’s resistance against forgetfulness.

A reclamation of the self.

Love, made visible in memory.

So what about you?

If you could go back to a moment or a season of your life, where would you go — and why?

What’s calling you back?

And what would you bring forward from that time?

~ Linzi

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P.S.

If you kept a journal when you were younger — and you still have access to it — I’d love to chat with you. I’m working on a project that celebrates how our younger selves made sense of the world, and I’m looking to talk with people who are willing to revisit what they wrote and reflect on it now.

You can reply to this email or message me through the Substack app if you’re open to chatting.

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