Before attending the class reunion I sought out the advice from an old friend who attended her own reunion last year for Salmen High in Slidell. Her only sage advice was this..."keep smiling and most importantly don't forget your reading glasses." As it turns out...excellent advice. With a few exceptions most old friends bear no resemblance to their previous selves and the name tag becomes the only clue as to who they are. The years do change things,
If you're like me you spent the hours previous to the reunion revisiting old haunts in a town that is hardly recognizable through old eyes. The houses where I used to live...still there but somehow indifferent to my existence. The school playgrounds where we built straw houses, the courtyards where we talked, the stadium walls that we scaled and walked...all changed or completely razed for the sake of some newer enterprise. Hmm...a depressing reality. Time stands still for no man. Elvis has left the building and he's not coming back. It's left to us individually to reconstruct that old reality from our own memory and keep it alive. The new reality however is so insistent on being acknowledged. One has to close their eyes and fall into a sleep and carefully navigate the dreamscape that once existed.
Reunions hardly seem necessary these days with so many ways to stay in touch and reminisce. Camelot and Brigadoon. It has to go away so it can come back. That's the essence of reunion.
People who know me... I mean really know me... understood what returning to Slidell meant to me last weekend and why it was particularly important where the event took place. This reunion not only took me back to graduation but back to the very place where I first felt love for another human being, and her house was where beauty dwelt. It is foolish I know but seeing that one person in that house after so many years still made my heart beat faster. Yes...foolish.
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