So why wasn’t I compelled to polish up my life for show-and-tell? It didn’t occur to me because I love those people. I mean my classmates, I just love them! I enjoyed every moment (well, okay there was one moment…but I’ll get to that) of our reunion. And the best part was that I didn’t merely get to step back in time for the usual remember-whens, but I also had a here-and-now opportunity to learn three important lessons.
First, the strands that weave your life together with your classmates’ lives, through the hours and the days, the work and the play, the laughter and the tears of that growing and learning time we call school can, believe it or not, be stretched over 25 years without breaking. One of my classmates recalled lying on a bench sobbing after our graduation ceremony, not for fear of what was ahead but for loss of the blanket of friendship we had knit, which couldn’t wrap us together anymore. She remembers another classmate hugging her, telling her “Don’t cry, we’ll always be close.”
He was wrong, and he was so right. We went in different directions because we had grown-up life to do. But we all headed out to do it from the same starting point, with shared experiences standing strong behind us. When we came back to the starting point together it felt like a comfortable place to talk about the world for a safe little while with people we belong to. And so Reunion Lesson Number One: If we take a moment to tighten the strands of the connections we are given throughout life, they make good places to rest along the way.
Reunion Lesson Number Two involved the above mentioned moment I didn’t enjoy. I do love my classmates, all 16 of them. I’m able to love them because love has so many degrees of depth and meaning. Some of them I love because I know them and they’re among the very best people I know, and some of them I love for things I see they’ve become, that I would like to know more about. Some of them I simply love nostalgically, because of our shared memories.
I share a lot of memories with the classmate others would say was my best friend, but if she and I each told you the same memory, it would sound like two different stories. We never did see things the same way. The others would say we didn’t disagree often, and that would be because I wasn’t good at expressing my opinion, while she did it quite loudly and well. If it was an issue I was emotional about, I would eventually have a heated and inarticulate outburst followed by tears, then we would be distant for a couple days at the most, and things would drift back to normal. I still wouldn’t agree, definitely wouldn’t understand, but I wanted peace.
Near the end of our reunion the conversation drifted to a topic about which she and I have made opposite choices. Since it seems some things never change, she was able to express her opinion boldly and clearly, with everyone around us knowing full well that I, sitting next to her, was miles away from agreeing. Her certainty made it sound as though I had made an uninformed and incomprehensible decision. She turned to me and said “no offense,” and because some things never change, I was completely silent, which just punctuated her statements.
On the way home I cried, saying aloud to the empty dark truck all the things I might have said to her. Then through my anger it occurred to me I was forgetting something I strive for in my adult life, open-mindedness and empathy. I made the right choice for my family; But given the circumstances and people involved, she probably made the right decision for her family as well. And so lesson two: Some things never change. Unless you change them; To be true friends with someone you don’t repress opinions and ignore differences, you share opinions and respect difference.
The third lesson was more like a gift. After a pre-reunion dinner with close friends, we talked quietly into the evening about our lives. “If I could change it,” said one with clear-eyed certainty, “I wouldn’t.” He blessed me with this statement shortly after a very bad day during which I questioned everything that led me to where I was. I was feeling sorry for myself, disappointed in myself, discontent with my life. The beauty of his words lies in the fact that he hasn’t had a charmed life either. Each of us made decisions that caused us to struggled and soar, feel panic and calm, grieve and rejoice to degrees much higher than we could have imagined in school. And not a moment of it can we go back and change, and yet we ask the question, “What would I have done differently?” If you know without a doubt that the answer is “Nothing,” what a great relief that is!
That’s not to say we should just stop trying for improvement. My wise friend works with juveniles and is raising a new baby, and using what he’s lived rather than wishing he could change it. I said I wasn’t successful. To rectify that, I need the “prosperous termination” of an “endeavor,” and I don’t think I knew before what exactly to try for. I do now, it’s Reunion Lesson Number Three: Endeavor to be content with your life to this point, knowing each experience has given you something to make use of in shaping the future.
It made me feel good, all those years ago, to have a vote of my classmates endow me with the Most Likely to Succeed title. What I didn’t realize was that in order to succeed, I needed them. I needed the time we spent learning together, I needed the time apart, and most of all I needed a reunion.
