Perspective
I vividly remember my mother telling me that she was going to her 25th high school reunion.
Time slowed to a grinding, smoking halt as I turned and looked at her, blinking, blinking, blinking, all the while thinking loudly inside my head, "My lord, woman, how old ARE you?"
"That’s nice, Mama," I said. "That sounds like fun!," I continued, thinking to myself two things: 1) that I honestly couldn’t imagine anything LESS fun (what on earth do people that OLD do at a party, anyway?) and, 2) in fact, I would rather have flaming sulphuric forks dipped in jalapeno juice stuck into each eyeball than be that old.
Tomorrow night, I’ll go to my 30th high school reunion. Do I smell sulphur?
I hope all my aggressive moisturing for the past week has paid off. Maybe I should have started earlier. Probably. Like 1977 earlier.
That was a quick 30 years. Sometimes, I’d really like the chance to do it again, do some things differently. And then, sometimes, I know for sure that all that went, did, was, is part of what goes, does, is, that there is nothing I would change, not even the bad things, the losses, the stupid decisions, the date (singular) with the boy who looked like James Taylor but was as Dumb as a Rock and Mean to Waitresses (I can live with Rock, not Mean). I had pleaded with my friend, Howard, to set me up with him – remember, Howard? Howard warned me, but c’mon! James Taylor!
Moisturizing would have been a good idea all those years, and exercising more, and drinking more water, and not pickling my brain by reading People magazine, and keeping a journal, and remembering to floss, but who knew? Can we only know some things by looking back on them?
Will I recognize people tomorrow night? Will they recognize me? Does it matter? Will we be so thankful to still be above ground that weight and chins and bald won’t matter? I think so. I hope so. I know so. It seems we are all different people now – aren’t we? Will I be surprised to see how the stories have unfolded, that what I knew of them in high school wasn’t the whole story? Is there a spirit of the old self still there in all of us, something that at 18 shone through in some inalterable way? We’ll see. We’ll see.
