I lived in the Auburn area for most of 1980-1993 (usually at 7955 Bullard Drive, Newcastle, 95658). Like the other homes around us, we had about seven acres and in the summer the grass died and the fire danger was extreme.
It was isolated and lonely compared to the tight Seventh-Day Adventist communities I had known at Pacific Union and Avondale colleges.
We were a Sabbath-keeping home. After church Saturday morning, I’d often go for long walks on my own. One Sabbath afternoon, I walked in to Auburn and over to my Placer High School. It was the Spring of 1984. I was about to graduate. It was a beautiful sunny day and I felt happy.
I saw a bunch of classmates on the football field and I wandered over to say hello.
As I got closer, I saw that people were dressed up and a feast was laid out on the tables and I realized that whatever this celebration was for, it was not for me. I stopped and turned around and got away as fast as I could, my face burning. I felt like such a loser because not being invited played on my repeated experiences of abandonment, going back to earliest childhood when my mother died and I got a bunch of temporary replacements and I never learned to attach securely, and as I grew up, my anxiety would cause me to lash out at others and eventually to abandon myself and whatever ties I had before anyone else could dump me first.
I was the Editor of my school newspaper and reported for the Auburn Journal and KAHI radio, but there were still some events for which I did not have a pass.
Surely the Lord will gather me in.
