Fifty Years, Folks!

Last night was one of those evenings that was meant to be sipped like a fine wine, meant to be lingered over. It was not an evening spent in candlelight, nor was it spent beneath the stars and an open sky. It was not an evening pregnant with prolonged gazes or enriched with scintillating conversation.

No.

Last night I joined my mother at her fiftieth high school reunion. 

Mom wanted to go, but was unsure of herself. When she had gone to reunions in the past Dad had always accompanied her. This was another First without him (and not the last of the Firsts, I suspect). She  asked if I would go instead, never guessing how much I would truly enjoy it. Yes. Truly. 

I was surrounded for three hours by people from a different age, a different time, a different generation, by white heads and heads dyed young. I sat in the swirl of music from their youth punctuated by laughter--both gentle and raucous--and the quiet talk that comes with reminiscing. As I looked around, I saw the old who had aged well, and those who had aged graceless. I saw my mother and was so, so proud of her. She says she was a wallflower in high school, but if so then I am convinced that wallflowers make the best of mothers and the best of women.

I saw balding Lotharios and withering seductresses, I saw pomp and circumstance smelling of moths and cottonballs, and I saw how vapid a life without faith can become. I heard a prayer spoken in which God seemed like a stranger behind a closed door (but at least there was a prayer). I saw candles lit for those who had gone on behind that closed door themselves.

I met a woman who had undergone a brain aneurysm and a double stroke this past year, and was still here and well enough to sit at our table, speak in a rough voice about God and the people who prayed, and down two beers in twenty minutes flat. I met another woman who had been the class valedictorian and yet couldn’t seem to understand family--upon hearing how many children Mom and Dad had borne, she snidely remarked, “Did you finally figure out what was causing it?” 

I saw veterans stand up so they could be recognized, and afterwards I saw the tall one who looked like a grizzled version of the dapper soldiers on all of the old propaganda posters go around and quietly shake hands with the comrades he didn’t know he had. He didn’t know I heard. “Welcome home,” he said soberly. I’ll never know what they lived through.

Sitting there, I knew what fifty years felt like. Looking around, I felt the weight of eternity and the ethereal lightness of my mortality.

I am glad of chances to think on these things.