Last week, I had dinner with someone I've known for more than half my life. This is one of the reasons I came back to Philadelphia-- so I could be with people who have known me through multiple incarnations. When I met her, I was a free-lance producer for National Public Radio. We've been friends through the intervening careers-- in archives, museums and urban revitalization. I told her that these days, I was thinking a lot about the evolution of identity. That I was increasingly comfortable with my current role, but could not always define myself completely in terms of what I am now. That sometimes I still feel the need to explain who I used to be.

She didn't see the problem. That 25 year identity shaped what you are now, she said. You're still the same person. Why shouldn't you tell people what you've done for most of your life?

Smart woman. I have wonderful friends in some of the other places I've lived. But only here do I have friends who look at me and remember who I was when I was 28.