I should be sleeping. Maybe I am, and this is a sleepwalk, this
wide-awake half-dream I'm in, back in my own adult life, reflecting on
returning to a place I spent 4 years of my youth. I am certainly sleep-deprived
and, admittedly, still a bit hungover (thanks to Liz Garland's reprovement at
about midnight that I was way too sober for a 20th college reunion, as she led
me to the large bottle of Cuervo). But the haze is worth the price of admission
for the past few days of tripping and stumbling down memory lane.
Reunions have the capacity to make anyone shrivel into a ball of
self-doubt, no matter how much false bravado worn like red lipstick. We throw
hand-shadows at the walls of our old dorms, proving -- mostly to ourselves but
also to others -- that we deserved the cap and gown, we were bright young
things and we have made Something of Ourselves. And then we watch the shadows
we create play, grow, perhaps get out of control and move independently of our
fingers and we wonder what is real and what is parlour trickery? We measure
ourselves against our former selves, then we backslap and handshake and measure
this mirrored thing against their mirrored thing until we're all just walking
down runways. Or at least that's what a reunion has the capacity to create.
Shallow conversations, clustering years into a blurb, asking someone how they
are without really hearing the answer. This is what we expect from a reunion.
That, and free booze. And dancing to "Rock Lobster".
And perhaps that's what is done at the early reunions, 5 years
out, 10 years out, parading our jobs and careers and cars and wives and
children as proof of our consequence on earth, post-college.
What I found this weekend was quite different. A measure
of...well...measure. Connection. A sense that this community is a vital one and
an important one to me, not just for those long-long-ago brief years before my
knees creaked, but now. And maybe, the wonder and blessing for me is, that most
especially now.
I remember the 5th Reunion. I was 27, adrift professionally and
personally, wanting to Matter, surrounded by people already (seemingly) on
their way, whether in graduate school or professionally. I still hadn't heard
my calling yet, and was lonely. And the posturing was fairly evident. I was
still fairly freshly out of this environment, still missing it somewhat, the
people, the ease of the day, the rigor of the reading. I remember dancing
joyously, ecstatically, almost dervishly, hoping the whirl of our movements
might slow time, rewind. I missed the 10th. Returned with my then-husband to
the 15th. There were babies of others' by then, we'd all multiplied, a bit more
stable and rooted in our adult feet. More real that time. We had sunk further
into our becoming. I still felt adrift and not yet anywhere.
So to my 20th. In some ways I've always been a bit of a late
bloomer, and these past 5 years have felt more like a quickening. Certainly
this time, I could return to my college armed with a career and
accomplishments, not having to suffer the "So, are you still doing that
music thing?" At this point, most of us could (whether the accomplishments
were quiet or loud, personal or professional). I also returned armed with
failure and acquiescence, clarity and acceptance of the murkiness. And from
brief and strong encounters with my classmates, I felt we all did. There was a
realness this time. Shedding of the skin. We have famous and extremely
accomplished friends amongst, we have classmates who have amassed a great
amount of wealth, we have classmates who lead quietly devotional lives, who
have had great conversions, who have failed and fallen, who have raised
children and devoted their time to their families, we have classmates who have
suffered cancer and run marathons and we have classmates who we lost along the
way. There's something about a small college experience, where faces are as
familiar as rain, when returning to see those faces older, thinner, lined with
joy and pain, you feel a homecoming serenity. Might not have liked all of them,
but without these faces, most of whom you barely knew, the landscape wouldn't
be right. Look across a tent decorated like a wedding cake, and see the 40 year
old faces of the 18 year old you'd pass every morning in the hallway, muttering
a polite hello, or the boy you once thought you could love now with his
beautiful wife and children, or the beautiful girl who intimidated you still beautiful
but the hardness softened....
Maybe
the days of the puppet shadows are passing. Maybe as we have been bruised in
our quest up the hill, holding on tightly to the spouse or the children or the
career or the friends, we return to a very small portion of our past, such few
days together, really, in the scope of a lifetime. But what days....
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