I could have easily talked myself out of attending my high school reunion, but it had been ten years since the last one I attended, and I like to think I’m no longer the social chicken I used to be. Most people say there are reasons they don’t keep in touch with their classmates, that the lack of communication over the years is intentional. I’m not so sure I agree.
My extended family is about as large as my high school class. Sometimes months and years go by before I can stand in the same room with certain cousins, aunts, or uncles. But it’s not intentional. It is a consequence of work, family, and even to some extent, energy. Geography plays a part since everyone is a bit more spread out these days. And while family will eventually bring everyone together for a wedding or funeral, it just doesn’t work that way with classmates.
I do have anxieties about being in the same room with the people I remember from grade school. Having gone to Catholic school for a while I tend to remember my mistakes and flaws much more than anything that went well. I remember I wasn’t attractive or well thought of, and I didn’t seem to have a definitive social group within the walls of the high school. I remember there were kids who seemed to make a sport of upsetting others. I worry about the night triggering feelings of inadequacy, ugliness, loneliness.
To combat my nerves I brought along my husband, a wonderful sport and conversationalist in any setting. He’s also very logical. He couldn’t help asking me why it was I wanted to go. I thought it was curiosity, to see who else showed, what they were doing, and let’s be honest, how they all looked. But the moment I entered the room I knew that was wrong. I was there because I shared a history with my class. We grew up together, some of us quicker than others, but we occupied a precious space in each other’s childhood and adolescence, cheered at each other sporting events, applauded each other’s awards, and mourned the passing of those no longer with us.
We know where the tender spots are in our classmates’ personalities, and have all the basic categories down, the smart ones, the witty ones, the shy ones, the one’s brave enough to take on the nuns. But as I looked around at my wiser, more compassionate class I couldn’t get over how at home I felt just standing among them.
So, I’m here to encourage you to go to your reunion. Go whether you have bad or good memories. Take a deep breath and plunge back into the past. It’s a wonderful opportunity to make amends if you were one of the bullies. If you were one of the rejects, it’s an opportunity to forgive. It’s not so much about making friends or doing a victory dance over an old rival’s fading grace. It’s more about learning to love your past, and the part of you that may have succeeded because of it. It’s about looking around a room and feeling instantly connected, welcomed, appreciated. Go to your reunion if for no other reason than to spend some quality time with people your own age. Bring your spouse, a partner, a friend, anyone who will help you walk through the doorway, backward in time where waves of memories will keep you afloat. There’s a warm embrace, a pleasant sea of faces, and an excitement as you make your way around the room trying to recall names. You’ll feel as though you are walking through the rooms of your childhood home, admiring, enjoying, loving the treasures you come upon. Go to your reunion. I promise you won’t be sorry.
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Remembering my mother
I hate editing. Editing for me is like cleaning a closet, parting with some sentimental phrases, bagging all those items that clutter up the story. But it is sometimes those off-story moments I like best. It is where my voice and vision have set off on their own. They have a delightful, reckless nature. They are happy, compatible drunks. They have courage. They don’t look over their shoulders wondering if the story police will take them down. They cry, whimper, and exhaust themselves complaining. And even knowing that my manuscript will come back with big blue lines drawn through it, I still can’t resist letting them have their moment. I am swept away by their free spirits. Unlike those items at the back of the closet, word clutter is of no use to anyone else. Or is it?
With Mother’s Day nearing I dug out a few paragraphs of my scrap file from MOTHER for my readers.
" …no one on earth could ever look at you the same way, recognize in an instant, that you were harboring gladness or pain or a secret pregnancy, that the boyfriend you so adamantly defended was hurting you, that you had put on weight, cut your hair too short, bought a dress that just wasn’t you. She could see it all. She was a mirror, a friend, a guaranteed companion and ally, your flesh, your blood, your skeleton, your fan, your critic, your doomsayer, your connection to all living things, and the only reason you did not crawl off in a corner and drown in your grief. For there was always that voice, in life and beyond, her voice, the remainder of her guiding spirit, the one that kept you from losing your virginity at sixteen, the one that made you collect the money you loaned a friend, the one that reminded you breaking your own heart would break hers too, twice as much, dead or alive until the end of time. You couldn’t let her watch you from the afterlife, collapsed and finished. It was your duty to show her how well she had done her job. You needed to honor her spirit. You were forced, by that voice that always inhabited you, to stand and face the day, to outlast the pain and the loss until you could do so much more than cope, until you could live your life as you were meant to, put up the Christmas ornaments without sobbing so hard it ruined the holidays for everyone else, drink coffee with a friend’s mother and not fall to pieces…"
This was the essence of my mother, strong, protective, and painfully candid.
There was a time when I had been fired from my job as a producer for a local cable show. I was twenty-five. I took a job at a convenience store, rethinking all my past, flawed decisions. I guess I didn’t do it fast enough because in a few weeks I got a phone call from my mother encouraging me to go where I was happiest, where my life seemed to work, to the place she most feared my being--New York City. I finally pulled myself out of my emotional muck one freezing day in February, and drove myself to the bus stop across the street from my parents’ home. My mother stood behind a curtain where she could see me. Worse yet I could see her. As time went by and I began to shiver, I wanted to run back to my car and make a quick getaway to an afternoon of Mary Tyler Moore reruns. But she just wouldn’t leave that window. I got on the bus. I ended up getting a temporary job at NBC, which turned permanent soon after. I somehow fit in, made friends, supported myself, and refueled my dreams.
At times when you forget who you are, your mother (here or in the hereafter) will find someway of reminding you. Your dreams are her dreams, and you dare not disappoint her.
With Mother’s Day nearing I dug out a few paragraphs of my scrap file from MOTHER for my readers.
" …no one on earth could ever look at you the same way, recognize in an instant, that you were harboring gladness or pain or a secret pregnancy, that the boyfriend you so adamantly defended was hurting you, that you had put on weight, cut your hair too short, bought a dress that just wasn’t you. She could see it all. She was a mirror, a friend, a guaranteed companion and ally, your flesh, your blood, your skeleton, your fan, your critic, your doomsayer, your connection to all living things, and the only reason you did not crawl off in a corner and drown in your grief. For there was always that voice, in life and beyond, her voice, the remainder of her guiding spirit, the one that kept you from losing your virginity at sixteen, the one that made you collect the money you loaned a friend, the one that reminded you breaking your own heart would break hers too, twice as much, dead or alive until the end of time. You couldn’t let her watch you from the afterlife, collapsed and finished. It was your duty to show her how well she had done her job. You needed to honor her spirit. You were forced, by that voice that always inhabited you, to stand and face the day, to outlast the pain and the loss until you could do so much more than cope, until you could live your life as you were meant to, put up the Christmas ornaments without sobbing so hard it ruined the holidays for everyone else, drink coffee with a friend’s mother and not fall to pieces…"
This was the essence of my mother, strong, protective, and painfully candid.
There was a time when I had been fired from my job as a producer for a local cable show. I was twenty-five. I took a job at a convenience store, rethinking all my past, flawed decisions. I guess I didn’t do it fast enough because in a few weeks I got a phone call from my mother encouraging me to go where I was happiest, where my life seemed to work, to the place she most feared my being--New York City. I finally pulled myself out of my emotional muck one freezing day in February, and drove myself to the bus stop across the street from my parents’ home. My mother stood behind a curtain where she could see me. Worse yet I could see her. As time went by and I began to shiver, I wanted to run back to my car and make a quick getaway to an afternoon of Mary Tyler Moore reruns. But she just wouldn’t leave that window. I got on the bus. I ended up getting a temporary job at NBC, which turned permanent soon after. I somehow fit in, made friends, supported myself, and refueled my dreams.
At times when you forget who you are, your mother (here or in the hereafter) will find someway of reminding you. Your dreams are her dreams, and you dare not disappoint her.
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