ReUnion

Today I return from the alternate universe of deep memory and nostalgia, a weekend in Themiddleofnowhere, Indiana, my fortieth high school reunion. 

I was lucky enough to attend a boarding school on the shore of a beautiful natural lake, and our reunions are different than most - more a marathon than 5k.  Every May we alumni descend on this tiny rural town for an entire weekend — like entitled grandchildren attending a funeral.  But we seek no inheritance. All most of us are after is renewed sense of connection with this place, with one another, and ourselves. For three days we collect the threads of our younger selves and weave them back into who we are now.  

I was a scholarship kid at Culver, and I’ll go to my grave certain that it saved me from any number of deadly landmines I'd tip-toed around in Gary. Although only three of my 58 years were spent here, it was a pivotal time as these kids and teachers from worlds I knew nothing about became my family during those three autumns, seemingly-endless winters, and always too-short springs. Together, somehow, we grew up and scattered back out into the world.

Forty years later, we make the pilgrimage back through nascent cornfields to the shores of Maxinkuckee, where we walk and talk and drink and laugh and remember and remind and are reminded and try to remember some more.

We revisit places that are part of who we are: the ring, parade field, crew sheds, dorm rooms, class rooms, mess hall. The lake. The deep night sky.  We remember calling home from the payphone down the hall, sitting hours, dancing to Free Bird, climbing trees that are no longer. Sounds of drums and cannon fire and chapel bells blast open tunnels of memory and Time is no longer linear. Years intersect and become blurred. 

We connect with people who meant everything or nothing to us then, who now are vital links to those places only trigger-words and names can take us. We look into eyes we knew long before the creases of loss took hold of the corners, and find new, deeper love and connection. We talk of parents and siblings, tell backstories we never knew how to share during those teenage years. We are part of each other, good and bad, like it or not.

The bricks and trees and paths of campus, the words and laughter of friends steer me deeper into myself for these few days in May. I hope I'm a better, kinder person than I was during the Handiwipe Years. If I have learned one lesson since then, it's that the only thing that heals is love, and that we all -- each one of us -- want to love and be loved. Today I know I'm capable of both. And no matter how hard I pull at that thread that keeps us all stitched together, it just won’t break.