The Way We Were--Two Weeks Ago

After 65 years high school class reunions should not be taken lightly.  Time was when you would go to maybe your 25th or 30th and get a chuckle out of how many surprises there are.  The class mouse is now a coporate CEO and the class beauty an overworked gramma with lines forming from here to there.  But after 65 of those meetings I wouldn't say the chuckles are all gone but they are definitely subdued. 

The meeting is a little more somberuse the only joke anyone can remember is the one about not buying green bananas any more.  In our class we've given up remembering the stupid pranks we used to play or the time five guys skipped school to chase a firetruck to a fire.  Now we tell about knee replacements and how life has changed since cateract surgery or hearing aids. 

There are the usual questions about why so and so isn't here and someone usually knows the real reason they didn't show up.  It probably has something to do about the unit they are on in the nursing home or not being able to keep near enough to the bathroom.  There are always those who refuse to venture out because they aren't as pretty they used to be--or at least thought they were.  As for the rest of us we don't care how lame or decrepit or ugly we have become.  We just want to celebrate something and a good long time on earth seems like a good reason to get together. 

Besides that our lives mean something to each other.  Some of us have experienced 12 very formative years together.  Granted they were some of our most immature years but they all went into the mix that left marks and memories.  And we all surprised each other with our spirit and the way our best qualities have emerged as enduring and worthy.  I mourn those who almost never returned to claim an identity that was a part of the full 42l of us.  And, of course, I mourn those who died very young, one while we were yet Seniors and one the following summer.  I also mourn those who through the years and even quite recently have left us.

At each reunion someone remembers to bring some year books and pictures of those "the way we were" years.  We look at them and recognize that there is something unique and special about friendships that began to long ago and have lasted this long and the people who bother to gather to celebrate them.