Re: Union

There were 364 of us, the Blair High School class of 1974. We came of age in the year that Richard Nixon was impeached, the Rubik's cube was invented, and the first bar code was scanned. Stephen King published his first novel, and Leonardo DiCapprio was born. The fall of Saigon was less than a year away. And there were many people in the world who actually had been to Woodstock.

Last night we had our 40th class reunion.

And as I try to untangle my complicated mix of emotions about it, I realize that the joy and depth I feel at seeing everyone again has absolutely nothing to do with high school whatsoever.

At one point last night, we were encouraged to come up to the mic to reminisce about any funny stories we may remember. I laughed. Funny?  High school? My memories of high school were ones of noisy, unskilled desperation. I was rebellious, enraged, aching with an intolerable and incoherent desire for freedom. While everyone around me (seemingly) was happily enjoying their carefree days of youth, I embraced causes with a fierce passion -- from the local politics of enforced integration, to joining our local evangelical church group -- then fell from grace howling at the universe. I performed miniscule acts of defiance, smoking cigarettes on the park benches across from the school, running away to San Francisco. My only respite was when I put words on a page (with a typewriter, when I wanted to use advanced technology). I dropped out of my last semester and took my one remaining class at a continuation school. I don't believe either of my parents attended my graduation. I could not wait.... could not wait... to get out of town forever.

Out of our class of 364, I think I had a working acquaintance with maybe... six people. I was not in the popular crowd, I didn't "date," I lasted two days on the swim team (two days of panic, fear, and abject misery). I was a journalism geek who used my privileges to ditch school. I was the Senior Class Treasurer, winning with a write in campaign of maybe five votes. My happiest moments were in my history and English classes, and I used math to make sense of my world, working out trig proofs late at night while my mother divorced her husband and our house was foreclosed upon outside my bedroom door.

Funny moments? Not too many.

The breakthrough moment happened a few years ago at a reunion when I was talking to someone and heard what had really been going on with her during high school -- not good stuff, stuff that in many ways was worse than my own life. As we talked, I learned about some other stories, what was happening in other families. Alcoholism, abuse, alienation, pain. And I finally had a lightbulb moment: I wasn't the only one feeling pain back then!  DUH!  We were all suffering, and all so unskilled at dealing with it. It was not that everyone except me was fine and cool and happy on the surface. No! It was a world of surface smiles and underground turmoil. We were all in this together but separately, and had no power to escape, no idea how to work our way through our pain except to just blunder through it and get out the other side.

Last night I realized that most of my conversations were deliciously connected. It was an utter delight to see the friends I had known well, and to dive into our old quirky senses of humor and mutual shit-giving. It was also amazing to engage in conversation with people I didn't necessarily know in high school. We were now reminiscing about conversations and experiences we'd had in previous reunions, and not at all about Blair. These are new old friends, people I find I want to spend as much time as possible with, having known and not known them for so many decades.

And yet, it was more than that. Forty years ago, I felt that all these people were from a different planet from me. But we launched from the same space and time, were taught the same way to think by the same teachers, were caught in the same vortex and spun out into the world simultaneously.  We are far more similar than different, most of us, and that is fascinating to me. Like family, we did not really have a choice in being thrown in with each other, and we weren't the tribe that most of us would be lucky enough to find in college, but we know the same people, we know each others' parents, we have a common database of images, sounds, and events to share and cross reference and grow from.

So last night was amazing. As with high school, I went in thinking I was the only one dealing with health issues. But as the evening progressed, I realized that -- once again -- we are all in more or less the same boat. We are now the caretakers of our parents (if they are still alive). We are now watching our children launch into their own new trajectories. We still exchange stories of drug taking (now anti-inflammatories and steroids). And we all now think of our mortality with a presence and perspective that we never used to have.

The moments together are precious. It's like, finally, we have figured out how to talk to each other on a level that matters. There was not a lot of strutting about this time, talking (however obliquely) about careers and money and outward success. The questions were about people: how many children, how are your parents, how are you. We talked about how we feel our lives are going, and about the lessons we are now learning that we wish we'd learned 25 years ago. Lessons, usually, about health, and simplicity, and cutting through the bullshit.

Forty years, and I feel like I'm just starting to scratch the surface with these people.

I treasure these new/old connections. They link me to a past that I've long ago forgiven but never really knew. I still don't remotely know all 363 of my other classmates, but I'm getting there. And the kids are all right. We have mostly made it through OK, and are talking about doing this again far sooner. The final graduation will come soon enough for all of us, and there is still time to enjoy our carefree days of youth.