Today I went to church with my family, all four of us. Quite the rare event in itself, but even more rare because we went to Saint Simons.

Saint Simons....we stopped going there often after I graduated Saint Simons School in 1997, and stopped going all-together after Chris graduated in 2000. When we go to church now, we go to Saint Joseph's in Downtown Mountain View. We fit in better there, and our family has roots there streching back the the 1940s.

Saint Simons is strange for a Catholic church in the Bay Area. Because it's in Los Altos, it's pretty much all White with a sprinkling of minorities, mostly Asians. The lack of diversity made me uncomfortable today in mass. Strange to feel uncomfortable in a place I once knew so well. For 10 years, Saint Simons was a major part of my life.

I have SO many memories there. My first communion, May processions, singing a solo in front of the entire school (god, I had guts), ten years of Christmas plays, dozens of friday masses, stations of the cross, Sunday masses with my family, Confirmation, and my 8th grade graduation.

I'd like to be able to go back there and envision these memories, but I can't cause the church as I knew it is gone. Father Andre had it modernized and completely reconfigured into a "stage-in-the-round" type of layout after I graduated. Even though the stained-glass windows, statues, and paintings were saved...they've all been shuffled and moved around so much that the place is unrecognizable. And that's why it's so strange to go back. The building is still there but its like one of those surreal dreams where you know where you are but nothing is in its proper place.

Chris and I walked around the school after mass. The school itself has hardly changed at all since we went there. The breezeway, the upper hall and lower hall, the Science lab, Schram field, Mrs Shirey's office, the Computer lab, the library. It's all still there. We looked into our old classrooms and searched for ones that still had teachers we knew in them. We saw our class pictures hanging in the hall, and a new plaque for our recently departed eighth grade teacher, Judy Capaldo.

It's hard to believe that seven years have passed since my time at Saint Simons. I remember being a student there, and not being able to imagine being any place else. And here I am, supposedly all-grown-up and over half way through with college. That place, in more ways than I can say, formed who I am today. I owe a lot to it, and the teachers that taught me and always encouraged me to stand up for myself and do what I thought was right. And even though I had a lot of really tough times at that school, my parents, I think, made the right decision to send me there.

It's been many years since the four of us have been in Church in that building together. It brought back a lot of memories of times that are long gone, but sometimes feel like they were just a day ago.