Two reunions

It’s the time of year that lends itself to reunions: not necessarily the official, capital “R” kind with college classes or multi-generational families that take place in late spring on campuses or midsummer at lake houses, but the unofficial reunions in which holidays or other homecomings bring us together with familiar faces from our past.

I was part of two such gatherings in the past week, though only in retrospect did I see similarities between the two events. One was a yearly party for high school friends. The other was an afternoon when it happened to fall upon me to feed the livestock at my parents’ farm.

I’ve hosted a pre-Thanksgiving gathering for classmates from high school for the past four years or so. The group that gathers isn’t a defined clique, like those at the center of so many novels. This isn’t about four women who were bridesmaids at each other’s weddings or lived together in New York apartments after college graduation. It’s just a general invitation that goes out over social media every fall encouraging anyone from our class – or the class ahead of us, or the class behind us, or really anyone at all who ever knew any of us during high school – to get together.

Sometimes only my closest friends show up; other years, alumni join us whom I barely knew during our Concord Academy days. But it always works out. There are the obligatory “Wasn’t it you who” and “Remember that class trip when we,” but by the time the evening ends, we’ve always gone so much deeper than that: into what matters most to us now. Our careers, whether successful or foundering; our marriages or lack thereof, our children or the choices we’ve made not to have children; our travels; our joys and disappointments.

The other reunion took place in ankle-deep mud, and was meaningful in a very different way. For about three years, it was my daily responsibility to feed the sheep and cows at my parents’ farm. The routine began after I almost simultaneously lost my job and adopted a dog; with the kids off at school in the morning, I was free, and spending time in the barnyard was a great way for the dog to get some exercise. My farmhand duties continued until my father took on a business partner in his farming enterprise three years ago and I was no longer needed. By then I was ready for a break from the daily slog out to the haybarn.

But this weekend, with my parents and their business partner all out of town for the holiday, it fell on me once again to care for the animals. I wasn’t particularly looking forward to the task, but the minute I climbed over the fence and dropped into the mud in front of the barn, I became aware of how happy I was to be back there. The cows looked at me with eager hungry eyes, just as they used to. The sheep had the same benign gaze they always had. Retrieving the haybales and throwing them into the feeder was the same energizing stretch-and-lift workout I remembered from nearly a half-decade ago.

It was good to be back amidst the farm animals, and it was good to be back amidst my high school friends, and I hope neither group will be offended by the comparison. The point is that returning to old friends, be they agile (if increasingly middle-aged) two-legged humans or shaggy milling cattle, is rewarding. It reminds us of who we were, thirty years ago or just three years ago, and it reassures us that we can return. Familiarity is comforting, whether it comes in human or bovine form. At the party and in the barnyard, I was happy to be back amidst familiar faces.

30 years after graduation

It seems to me there are people who love attending high school reunions and people who wouldn’t dream of attending a high school reunion, and I know plenty of each.

I fall into the first group, although maybe not with quite so much fervent enthusiasm as some people do. I just always find high school reunions fun, and my 30^th, this past weekend, was no exception. Despite what you see in movies like “Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion,” no one actually goes to a reunion to be mean or snarky or exclusive. That makes for good Hollywood, but it doesn’t really happen that way. People go to reunions specifically because they want to re-unite. Simply being together is the main thing that happens at reunions.

True, there is reminiscing, and joking, and in some cases maybe just a touch of reinventing reality. But more than anything else, there’s a shared spirit, a sense that we are together because….well, because we were together at another time in our lives, and it feels somehow like fulfilling a mission to close this particular circle again every few years.

As I see it, reunion moments take on two different forms. The first form is the nostalgia: “Remember when we…” and “How did that evening end when we…” and “What were we thinking when we decided to...” The second form is the connecting in the moment, the process of not just recalling who everyone once was but finding out who everyone turned into. While there were probably many moments of reminiscing in between the group dinners and other organized events of this past weekend’s reunion, it was more notable how much mingling was going on. People were going way beyond their teenage circle of friends, and presumably talking about the present, or the years that have led up to the present.

It makes sense to me, because while remembering old times is often fun, I find exploring current times to be a lot more interesting. Now well into our forties, we have so much to talk about, no matter how well we did or did not know each other thirty years ago. We talk about careers and career changes, children or childlessness, aging parents or deceased parents, good decisions, bad decisions, serious illness or brushes with the law.

As it happens, this was our first reunion that marked the death of a classmate – or actually two. Our class had been blessed with unusually good luck in that regard; while all the classes around ours had suffered their share of early tragedies, our class had stayed intact for 27 whole years after graduation, and then two losses came within one year.

It’s a sobering reminder that every time we gather in five-year increments from here forward, there may be fewer of us. But it’s also a reminder of how essential it is to gather. We talk, and we listen, and we learn. I’m making the reunion sound somber, and it certainly wasn’t that. The late-night revelry I didn’t stay up for was presumably far more rowdy than the cocktail parties and dinners I attended, but even those felt festive and celebratory. And they should. Reunions are about reuniting. It is good to be together again, for no better reason than to celebrate our shared existence.

Everything I still don't know about 1980s bands (but still have the chance to learn)

It was one of those threads within the CA Class of ’84 Facebook group that started small and then grew and grew and grew.

And this time it was really interesting.

With our thirtieth reunion just three months away, there’s plenty of planning to do, plenty of pep-rallying to attempt (It won’t be fun if we don’t all go!), and no end to the reminiscing. (The Development Department would like me to insert a reminder here that there’s also supposed to be plenty of fundraising happening. Reunion years are expected to inspire large donations. Unfortunately, we seem to keep straying off-topic when the subject of annual giving comes up.)

This particular thread quickly grew more interesting than reminiscences about who sneaked in whose window (it was a boarding school) or who spent which night in the boathouse (it was on a river) or who got drunk at Louisa May Alcott’s birthplace (it was in Concord). One of my classmates posted that she was putting together a playlist, and that got everyone talking about music.

But it wasn’t quite what you might expect from the class of ’84. It wasn’t all Madonna or Wham or Culture Club. Because a lot of the people I went to high school with had truly sophisticated taste in music, and so listening to them reminisce is much more like taking a college-level class in 1980s musicology than spending an hour with the classic hits radio station.

X-Ray Spex. Mission of Burma. Adam Ant. Violent Femmes.  I remember some of the music. In other cases, I remember the band names but not the songs. Unsophisticated myself when it comes to musical tastes, both then and now, I certainly don’t have anything to add to the conversation about who saw which groups live (not to mention who ended up drinking in a London pub with which members of the British Invasion). But the conversation is interesting to me because it reminds me of what I like best about our high school reunions: the moments when we transcend the “Remember that night before the senior play” and “How did we ever get away with what happened on the class trip” to delve into cultural touchstones.

 Not that the reminiscing isn’t entertaining – it’s one of the main reasons people attend reunions -- but one thing that has always struck me about reunions is that by definition, they expose you to the remarkable experience of being in a room with several dozen people all born within a year of each other. Even without the shared memories of the boathouse, the sneaking-out-through-the-window, or the Nantucket class trip, I find it really interesting to share those cultural touchstone moments that define us merely by age, rather than by experience or high school popularity level.

I’m looking forward to our reunion in June for all of those reasons: the fun of being with old friends, the chance to connect with so many women and men with whom I have so much in common, and the reminiscing.

But it’s conversations like this thread about music that remind me I have always learned so much from this really interesting group of people. Thirty years after graduation,  I continue still to learn from them about music, and careers, and travel, and child-rearing, and difficult decisions.

And before our reunion weekend ends, I might even finally learn who passed out at Louisa May Alcott’s birthplace.