High School Reunion3. You Can't Go Home Again

Minneapolis is 13 hours behind Hong Kong, during daylight saving time. So 6:00 in Hong Kong is 17:00 the previous day in Minneapolis. I assumed it would take me a day or two to adjust. When I woke up at dawn on Friday morning, it was dinner time in Hong Kong. I don't normally wake up at dinner time, but I have been known to get up at or before the crack of dawn. It looked like I was adjusting immediately. That seemed strange, considering the long day I just had.

Chelsea was just as surprised as I was, and quickly took advantage of the situation. She had to work that day and assumed I would mostly sleep, but if I could take her to work, I could use her car. Bringing all those Chinese documents turned out to be a good thing. Minneapolis has a pretty good transport network, but it is not nearly as expansive as Hong Kong's. The metro goes nowhere near her neighborhood. A car would be useful, if only I could remember to drive on the right side.

There was an entire city and a lifetime of memories to see. I knew where my first stop had to be. I went to my last high school boyfriend's house. That might seem like a strange choice, but his mother was like a mother to me, and I knew he would not be there. I lived in their house at the end of high school and they practically adopted me, which made dating their son a little weird. That's a pretty long story. I probably wrote about it in a book somewhere.*

We had a great morning together. We have kept in touch, so she knew all about everything I have been doing and I knew about what her children were up to. I used to be close to her daughter, but I have not seen her since she was a teenager. She is 23 now and has a job, a boyfriend and lives in Boston. Unfortunately, I would not get to see her on this trip. I would see her brother, my ex-boyfriend, but not this morning. It was just the parents and me. That was the closest thing to a family reunion I was going to get. I had other places to go and we knew we would see each other again that weekend.

I drove around the old neighborhood. I was in town for a high school reunion, so I think I was supposed to. It's in the by-laws. I thought I would drive past my parents' house, just out of curiosity or something else, but I never did. I braced myself for some big cinematic emotional moment, but in the end, I was more indifferent than anything else. I had places to go and that house was out of the way. This might have been the perfect day for driving through childhood. It was a hot summer day, but cloudy. It always looked like it was going to rain. There was a little bit of thunder here and there, which made the soundtrack more dramatic, but it never actually rained. It was also Friday the 13th.

I drove past the old high school. That is required. I should call it the new high school. There was a major $125 million renovation after I left. Today's school looks nothing like where I went. Memory lane was effectively a detour. I'm sure the current students do not fully appreciate it, but the school looks so much better now.

The neighborhood cultural attractions are golf, shopping and outdoor recreation. I don't play golf and I was never a member of any of the clubs. Mall of America is a sight to behold, but I live in Hong Kong, which is essentially a giant shopping mall. Malls don't impress me. What I really wanted to see were the falls.

When I was growing up, it seemed perfectly normal to me that we had waterfalls in the middle of the city. Now, I can appreciate how unusual that is. Minnehaha Park is a wonderful place to walk around or ride a bike. It is maybe a fifth the size of New York's Central Park, but it has everything you need in a park – hiking trails, picnic grounds, athletic fields, historic buildings, ancient geological sites, Minnehaha Falls and the Mississippi River. If size is your thing, Wirth Park is pretty much as big as Central Park and there are hundreds of others, mostly near or around natural lakes. Some national park agency keeps ranking Minneapolis the best park system in the country, for what it's worth.

All that parking around in the middle of July made me hot and tired. As it turned out, I was staying in a house with a swimming pool. One of the great things about Minneapolis, or any small big city, is that outside of a few pockets downtown, you can drive around on a Friday afternoon without ever hitting any traffic. The ten mile drive to Chelsea's house took about 20 minutes. Driving the ten miles from the Kennedy Town MTR station in Hong Kong to the Chai Wan station could easily take an hour or more. That is why they built the MTR.

The swimming pool at Chelsea's house was big enough for a family, and I had it all to myself. Chelsea would be at work for several more hours. The neighbor houses were a respectable distance away and bordered by fences, bushes and trees. The nearest surveillance cameras were probably at the small shopping center two miles away. None of the professionals who maintained the pool and lawn were expected until the next week. Discounting any NSA satellites that might be pointed at the suburbs of Minneapolis, I had about as much privacy as I was ever going to get. With all the clouds, even satellites would not be an issue. The constant overcast might not be swimming weather to most people, but I liked it since I go from lily white to beet red in minutes. So I did the only logical thing I could do. I got as naked as a dolphin and spent a short eternity in the clean, clear water.

By the time Chelsea came home from work, I was dead to the world in her comfortable guest bedroom. The funny thing about adjusting immediately to the time difference was that I did not. As soon as I was out of the pool, showered and dried, I went out like a politician's moral outrage when the cameras turn off. Chelsea had planned to take me out that night and meet some of the old gang again, but when she found me asleep, she let me be. I wanted to go out, but I could not blame her for not waking me up. I would see all of those people at the reunion anyway.


* Living With Livia
The international … seller
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