The Road to '75

I am having guests for dinner tonight and the house needs cleaning.  At last!  I have found something I want to avoid more than writing.

So anyway, I just got two DVDs in the mail that captured the events and images of a recent high school reunion I attended.  It was a 4-year class reunion ('72-'75) of Mission San Jose High School - home of the Warriors.  Fremont, California.

I remember clearly my mother getting ready to go to her 20th High School Class reunion in Sacramento.  I remember thinking how impossibly old that made her sound.  Needless to say, I didn't mention to my daughters how many years this represented for me.  Let them do their own math. But there I was, driving solo up the 101 to attend my 37th.  And my first.

I packed like I was taking a 3 month holiday in Europe.  I couldn't decide what ill-fitting piece of wardrobe would make me look more like my 17 year old self.  It turns out, I could have brought my cap and gown - it wouldn't have made a difference - few people recognized me.

To be fair, I didn't graduate from this high school.  I spent my senior year at another school for reasons I will only (and very kindly) call "staff issues".  Also, there were not that many people from my class who came.  But when I picked up my name tag, bearing my senior picture, I immediately saw that I would be one of the scores of people there who would suffer the indignity of witnessing other classmates, over and over again, making that quick glance to the photo on my left shoulder before exclaiming: "Vaaaaaalri!!"

My sister Linda also attended.  She was one year ahead of me and we bolstered each other.  Our old pal Joe came.  He had been a fixture at our home for most of our high school years.  Monica, Hilary, dear Larry (who only came after much begging), Jim - all members of our little theatre clique were all there.  A few of us had breakfast Saturday morning at Denny's, the coffee shop where we had spent uncountable hours, hanging out, smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee and gossiping and talking about the "thee-ah-tah" late into the night after play rehearsals and on weekends.  We mapped our lives in the burnt orange, vinyl covered booths of Denny's.  I have no idea where those maps went.

Monica, Linda and I snuck into the theatre at the high school Saturday afternoon for a bittersweet look at where we had spent so much of our time in school.  I was instantly back in the 70's,  like Ebenezer Scrooge visiting the ghost of high school past.  Nothing had changed and yet we no longer belonged there.

Preparing for the dinner dance was very like high school, though.  My sister and I were holed up in the bathroom of my hotel room, helping each other with make up and hair like we were getting ready for prom.  We nervously made our way to the hotel ballroom to meld into what seemed to me to be a virtual sea of middle age (who me???  But I still have a 13-year-old!).  But there we all were:  "The Rah-Rahs" (cheerleaders), "The Drama Weirdos (um, us), "The Creek Rats" (those who took advantage of modular scheduling and wandered off to the creek that ran along side the parking lot to get stoned).  And while we didn't necessarily mix in high school, we did here.  Because we had one singular thing in common: we were all in our 50s,  Um, pardon me?  (Although I must say, under the heading of "Some Things Never Change", when you left the ballroom and entered the foyer - the unmistakable waft of pot coming through the french doors leading to outside was overwhelming.)

It was great fun reconnecting with old friends and acquaintances - Sharon, Delcee, Ramona, Patti, dancing, remembering what didn't seem like that long ago.  Even hearing of grandchildren went down smoother than I thought.  I was positively thrilled to see one guy there, looking old and horrible.  I had had a killer crush on him as a freshman and he had been nothing but rude and mean to me.  But seeing Mary Kate, homecoming queen and the girl I thought was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen - walk in - still stunningly beautiful but looking all of her nearly 60 years brought it all home.   I checked my photo on my name tag.  Yup.  I had walked those decades as well.  My incredibly cool shoes did not melt away any years.  They just hurt my feet.

Sunday morning, before my trip back home, they held a little service to pay tribute to the classmates who had passed away.  Nothing prepared me for that.  There were so many.  Naturally, I had heard of some who had died over the years (Susan, Garb), but that morning I sat between Monica and Linda, grabbing hands and gasping audibly at the huge numbers of classmate photos that appeared one by one on the screen. Among them, my sister's first serious boyfriend, Steve Rompell.  Cheryl McClain, who lived on the corner of Sawleaf Street and was in Mrs. Bates' first grade class with me at Warm Springs Grammar School.  And Shelly Lafond.  I couldn't get over Shelly Lafond.  Shelly and I were not close friends.  We did not hang out after school.  I 'm not even sure how we were friends so it may seem odd that her death hit me so hard.  Maybe it was because I hadn't thought of her in years and so, it caught me completely off guard.  In my mind, I could see her so clearly with her lovely smile, arms crossed in front of her, wearing a long cable-knit sweater.  I could hear her  sweet laugh.  I can see her mascara!   How was it possible that someone so fully alive in my mind could actually not be alive?  In fact, I could see all of them so clearly -walking around, hands in pockets, talking, laughing, running through the halls, living - so real I could nearly touch them.  

What is the stuff that memories are made of?  So real and yet not at all.  Driving home that afternoon, my head was full of my past.

Time is a mystery.