OMG - 40 years

I attended my 40-year high school reunion last night. That's a little hard to believe, since I am only 36 years old! (I am youthing myself through positive self-affirmation.) And in the less silly, more normal sense, it's hard to believe--I asked our 18-year-old daughter who just graduated from high school if she could imagine re-visiting her classmates in the year 2048, which would be the equivalent passage of time. Oh my.

Something like 26 of my classmates are dead--there's a wake-up call! And although many of them look almost exactly like they did in 1968, others have had mastectomies, or hip replacements, or are in wheelchairs. Many of the men are a couple of pant sizes larger. And with one exception, our favorite teachers have either headed to the Great Beyond or are struggling to stay on this side of it.

I re-connected with several people who are still very sweet and very special--some more so now than in the past. And I made a valiant attempt to figure out what happened with some old romances--at age 17, you don't know what you're doing in those situations, and you are ill-equipped to handle them. I tried to ask the sorts of questions that would resolve those old mysteries, and I got at least half way toward a better grasp of things.

Quite a few people who are members of the Sibley High School class of 1968 and live in the Twin Cities did not attend this event. I always wonder why--it's not as though these gatherings are frequent; the last one was in 1998, and there may not be another one ever again. Whether one goes is kind of like a Rorshach test; it says something about one's temperament and one's life--I'm just not sure WHAT it says, though. I only know that at this point, having connections to the various people who form the tapestry of my life has value, and that the threads which make up that tapestry are all important in their own way.