I am sitting in my car in the parking lot of a nursing home in central New Jersey. I am not here to visit and spend time with an elderly resident on a gray day in early May. No, I am here to say hello to my 17-year-old self.

From my perch in the car, I look out at the trash area of the building, which looks exactly the same as it did 43 years ago, where during my lunch break as one of the Sunday janitors at the nursing home, I would eat a tuna sandwich, or, if it was wrestling season and I was dieting, a handful of berries and nuts.

It strikes me as odd as I stare at the hulking green garbage incinerator and the grimy cement area above it, soiled and wet from a recent rain, that this was my chosen spot to eat, to take a break and sort out the myriad highs and lows of my senior year of high school. Were there no better spots inside, I call out to my 17-year-old self? A cafeteria or even a corner hideaway?

But, at least for now, my younger self has nothing to say to me. He is busy with his sandwich, which he eats quickly, while also writing something down in his notebook. After one more look, I start the car and head back to school.

I have traveled to New Jersey from the Vineyard on the cusp of my 60th birthday to spend the day with juniors and seniors at my old high school, which I graduated from in 1983. I was invited by a woman in the guidance office who had read my book of essays and asked if I would share my experience with the students. I agreed, suggesting that I could also help the juniors get started on their college application essays, something I do each spring for students on Martha’s Vineyard.

This is why, in part, I began my day at the parking lot of the nursing home. My college essay was about my experience working there, in particular a friendship I formed with a resident, a very old woman who played the piano while I swept and mopped the recreation room.

The piano player and I quickly connected, I will tell the students later by way of beginning our talk about the college essay. Every Sunday I would seek her out as she played the piano quietly in the corner of the room, songs I did not know but enjoyed anyway, the comfort of the music easing the way for our conversations. About what, I no longer recall, but I do remember looking forward to them, and that they felt different — more open, more thoughtful ­— than I was used to.

Then, as I look out at the students’ faces — some eager, some bored, some asleep, their cheeks resting on their outstretched arms — I tell them how one Sunday my new friend was no longer there. I knew, but didn’t really want to know what had happened to her, so I never asked. Instead, I continued to sweep and mop and empty the soiled diaper bins into the laundry area, while making sure I didn’t make another friend who might disappear without a trace.

I wish I still had that essay, I tell the students, because although I can remember in vague detail much of that time, I would love a deeper glimpse of who I was then and what I had to offer up about myself.

Who you are now is someone you will always remember and wonder about, I continue, hoping to shift the notion of the college essay as just a chore to finish, to the idea that it can be a vehicle for exploration.

We go around the room, trying out ideas for possible essays. One student says she wants to write about refrigerator magnets and I am intrigued. The subject is unique and playful, but where will it go, I ask?

She says it is how her family communicates, opening up in a way not always possible when angry or yelling at each other. Through these short lines of verse, displayed for all to see, they can be creative and loving and less harsh.

I get goosebumps the idea is so good, and tell her so.

Another girl wants to take ownership of the word weird, which she says people have called her since she was little. A non-conformist, she now wears the word as a badge of pride.

There are also many immigrant essays in the mix, a reminder that my hometown continues to thrive thanks to its ever expanding roots. A young man talks about how his family arrived from Egypt when he was in the third grade. He spoke no English at the time and begged his mother to come to class with him, which she did. A girl tells a similar story about moving from El Salvador.

I am moved as I always am when in the company of youth opening up about their lives, their energy and individuality palpable and infectious. I will experience the same feeling when talking to students on the Vineyard, including my daughter and many of her friends who are juniors now, kids I have watched with pride grow into young adults, and in whose company I feel blessed to share. At any moment, they can make me laugh like no one else can.

As the school day continues, the students and I get to know each other better by talking about our essays and by extension, our lives. When I ask if there are any questions, there are some about writing and some about what the school and town were like in my day. But my favorites are the ones that come out of left field, like when one boy asks me how tall I am.

Not very, I respond.

Another boy, a wrestler who when he finds out I was on the wrestling team and continued the sport in college, asks me how he can get quicker.

I am flattered. Instead of seeing me as a doddering 60 year old, this 17 year old, who looks as if he could leap tall buildings, thinks I can help him physically. But I am at a loss.

Wind sprints, I answer.

When the school day ends I am worn out, having taught eight classes and spent the lunch break talking with a few students while we ate sandwiches and chips in the principal’s office. In that smaller setting, these seniors, about to embark on the next chapters of their lives, opened up even more about their fears and the pressures they feel from parents, friends, society at large. I listened, remembering the feelings so well, mostly because they never go away.

I also thought about the Vineyard, and the graduation gatherings at the Tabernacle that will take place this weekend. Sunday’s walk across the stage by the seniors wearing their caps and gowns always takes me to a hopeful place. But I also know that amidst the joy that goes with graduation there is plenty of uncertainty, especially now in such a rapidly changing world and a country so askew at the moment.

But when the New Jersey students ask me for advice, I hesitate, knowing that words of supposed wisdom from someone who in a few days will blow out 60 candles on his cake can be a tricky thing. Each path is an individual one, and while my zig-zag life reveals plenty of clues for me as I take stock of my story, I’m not sure what it holds for others.

I’d rather take advice from you, I say, but when the students fall silent, I offer up one guiding light for me. Whenever I let curiosity instead of certainty, and kindness instead of fear, lead the way, I have always felt closer to my better self, I say.

At the end of the day, a reception for me takes place a few blocks away from the nursing home. I give a short reading at the event, choosing one of my essays set in my hometown. The passage has me jogging through the streets, trying to lose weight for an upcoming wrestling match. As I read, I experience a bit of vertigo, an older man reading about his younger self, while standing in a building he ran by nearly every evening when he was a senior in high school, wondering where his life would take him.

There is so much I want to tell the boy running with such determination, and to the boy eating his sandwich beside the trash area of a nursing home. I want to call out and shower him with advice, but, of course, that story has already been written.

And so instead I look for words of wisdom from the boy who is listening to an old woman he barely knows play the piano. He turns and for a moment it seems as if he is about to speak. But instead he just smiles and waves, then goes back to his writing.