Two Miles to Yesterday
My 1985 high school graduation
“Go, Sandy!”
I faintly heard these words of encouragement as I sprinted up the hill, just out my back door. My neighbors, the Millers, were sorting a pile of collected aluminum on their sprawling back yard.
My two-mile run started in the alley between my childhood home and the Miller house. They were often tinkering on a project in the yard as I breezed by, but this run was not a typical one.
It was May of 1985 - graduation day - and the beginning of my grand finale out of town. With the cheering section of my neighbors fading, I was chasing the lure of new beginnings.
Named the salutatorian for my class of forty-four, I practiced my speech under the sunny Iowa sky. Keeping pace while rehearsing different variations, I treated it like an exit interview. With my head in the clouds, I took no notice of my surroundings. My focus was on the finish.
I would typically scope out my town’s teen hangouts while running. Who was at the pool? Were the boys having baseball practice? Which cars were taking Mains downtown? My reaction was to run faster when others were watching.
But on that day in May, my small town had no planned events outside of graduation. As my classmates were preparing for the ceremony, I was taking a liberation day run around our town.
My early identity ran deep in community, trust, fun, and hard work. Summers were full of juggling time on my grandparents’ farm with playful days at our town’s pool. Holding a labor job since I was old enough to carry a hoe, I was ready for work that required only a briefcase.
The earmarked pages of our JCPenny catalog were replaced with a more upscale Spiegel version to mirror my dreams of businesswoman chic. Suave women wearing high heels in pencil skirts mirrored my goal as a city girl.
Running that graduation day, I looked forward to new life, far away from my smalltown beginnings. I longed for an identity completely different from the one I had.
And then forty years went by shockingly fast, bridging my graduating self to the me of today. Life went by with much trial and error. An ex-husband. A second husband. A successful career. Three grown sons. A new career. Big cities. Three states. Incredible life experiences.
My mom tells the story of the day I left for college. She had never seen me move so fast - filling my car - tearing off onto the county highway, never looking back. She and Dad moved out of town the following year, soon after my brothers and I left. We all eventually settled in big cities.
But time has a way of pulling you back.
Over the course of the last forty years, I have traveled back to my hometown for weddings, funerals, and reunions. And without fail, I run my two-mile route - no longer racing forward but noticing everything I once overlooked. As I’ve aged, so has my view of where I came from. The identity I once tried to outrun became something I’ve grown to embrace.
I longingly looked for my dad’s swirling barber pole at the end of Main Street, indicating the new barber was open for business. I smiled when I saw the small drive-in, remembering the towering soft-serve cones I would create in ridiculous proportions for friends. Seeing the farmers outside the coop evoked a memory of my own grandfather assessing the chance of much needed rain for his crops.
Just recently I came across a paper I wrote my senior year of high school. The assignment was to project our future lives forty years into the future – which would be today. Did I fulfill the dreams that filled my seventeen-year-old brain that sunny afternoon in May of 1985?
In my paper, I foresaw myself as a retired advertising exec. One who built a successful career and was now living out her quiet days in a luxury city penthouse. My days were filled with work in the arts that I funded while sitting on their fancy boards. I was happily married to my college sweetheart, sharing two grown children with perfect grandchildren. My success was defined by money, belongings, and length of relationships.
What I do know is that my 1985 excitement of the future was real, but I hadn’t a clue what success really looked or felt like. Perspective came later. And there was never a moment I had it all figured out.
I built a career that gained me a partnership at an accounting and consultancy firm. I was the founder of a large startup. I served on numerous boards and supported many worthy charities. I won awards for my achievements. My seventeen-year-old self surely would have been proud.
However, my greatest successes, those that brought me the most happiness, occurred in deepened relationships with a sense of purpose.
Although I did marry my college sweetheart, we later divorced. I don’t view this chapter as a failure, but rather a success in maintaining a friendship while raising our sons together. My pride in my new marriage is not that we survived ten years of a long-distance relationship, but that we emerged from it a stronger couple.
It was my new husband who longed to move to our mountain town. I didn’t want to leave behind the success that I had built in the city. After making the move, I soon found joy in building purpose through each new interaction. Reflecting on my years of career building, I now recognize the achievements that matter most to me — those deeply rooted in meaningful relationships.
I am now running through life in my new hometown of Durango, Colorado. I find myself enjoying many of the same things that formed my early identity. There is no penthouse suite for me, but instead, a small home in a mountain town. I fill my days with community, fun, and a fair share of work.
What my younger self didn’t know was that the very things I was running away from I would reclaim in my later life. In 1985, I looked forward to a time when I could proudly look back at where I came from and bask in what I accomplished. The part I didn’t understand was that my most treasured accomplishments would be a product of where I came from.
In August, I’ll return to my hometown for my 40th class reunion. I’ll run my two-mile route, taking in the pieces of my community that brought me joy. Although my childhood home no longer stands and my dad no longer occupies the barber shop, I’ll look for a wave from the Millers across the alley and smile at the barber pole, now used by the town beautician.
I’ll pass the Farmers Co-op and hope to see townspeople gathered outside, enjoying a sunny day—just like they did when I was growing up. Whether it’s Iowa in the 1980s or Colorado in the 2020s, we still share the same sky, with plants that need watering and games that need playing.
The greatest happiness comes from embracing the small things that are really the big things. I spent years chasing something different—only to realize the good stuff was mine all along.
