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The Summer of ‘15 this Time
I spent the longest five day weekend of my life back home in Southern California at my (gulp) 30 year reunion. Some of those girls go back to 1st grade and Brownies. Being 17 again for 5 days is both exhilarating, and exhausting.  
I was one of the bridge kids in our little corner of Los Angeles. Our elementary school split into two middles schools. My middle school fed to the OTHER high school in town (I have an honorary diploma, and placed for most talkative. Some of them never knew I didn't go to Warren); I lived in the neutral zone established when the newer high school was built (not mine: first graduating class was four students in 1900, I think. My  friend’s great grandmother one of the four). Two blocks from Florence to Telegraph; Two blocks from Lakewood to Downey Avenue. Not sure if my mom chose Downey High, or the schools wanted some of the biggest talkers permanently separated. Didn't work. I was a YMCA kid; A FBCD Kid, and then a cross pollinator for the high schools.  No matter where, or with whom, I always ran into some I knew from the other school. “We just can’t take you anywhere....”   
My hometown is situated between LA and Long Beach, Disneyland and Dodger Stadium, the mountains and the surf, San Diego and Santa Barbara. Nothing was more than two hours away. Arts, entertainment, culture, sports (the Dodgers of the 70s, the Showtime Lakers, the Kings before Gretzky, and my Trojans, libraries, theaters, and a very safe little pocket of metro LA. Our parents built the Apollo space capsules, and later the space shuttles. We watched in horror as Columbia exploded and took McAuliffe with it. It was the kind of town like old Pasadena, where 3rd and 4th generation Los Angelenos mixed with 1st and 2nd. Didn't matter.  
I had my own little reunions, five of them over four days, with my personal pantheon. People who knew me when, and exclaimed that I haven't changed. Only for the better, I suppose. All of them. Many them teachers, counselors, even one is the new super at our district. 18 is not 48.
I functioned on maybe 15, 16 hours of sleep that weekend. No one on their deathbed looks back fondly on that really great night's rest. I heard my oldest friends validate me to counter the very ways my recent administration wanted to squelch Debbie O. I had them asking, "what in the world took you to the WNC?" and watched as they settled in for the long, strange trip it's been. I spent time with the very people who helped shape me into me. I touched my roots, and quenched the thirst in my soul not to be an evaluation score, or rated based on tests, but to be evaluated-- no, just loved--for who I was, who I am, and who they all knew I would become, and the woman yet to be. Even I am eager to meet her.  Even those who couldn't attend are now back in touch. As if no time has passed, even if it's been since the day we graduated.
We came together, maybe a third of the class, for a magical weekend, a magical evening, to discuss a magical place, that provided a magical childhood and a lifetime’s worth of magical memories.  
We lost one of our own that night, a legend from the class ahead of mine, dating one of my classmates. Beautiful couple. Beautiful man. Fabulous star athlete, scholar, and gentleman. He never woke to see morning. They bury him today. The city mourns. His family mourns. His class mourns. Mine does too.  
My Personal Homecoming Parade mixed the height of elation and joy with the depth of despair, disbelief, and so we hold each other tighter, say I love you, girlfriend, one more time, and thank our lucky stars that we have each other. And we know now we always will.
All y'all (I got busted once, for being "Southern") know some classes are better than others. Ours was one of the best classes to ever pass through the halls of my high school, and I heard that from teacher then, and later.
Whatever the coming school year brings, I am stronger, wiser, sadder, and happier about the future than I've been in a long time. Bring it.

Comments

  1. UnknownJune 5, 2016 at 3:24 PM

    Sometimes a simple summer weekend becomes a significant signpost on the mile marker of one's journey.
    a life-affirming and life changing week packed into a few short days.

    ReplyDelete

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