WHY WE GO BACK

In unexpected ways, a class reunion shows
how closely our lives are entwined

By LESLIE BARKER GARCIA
Dallas Morning News Staff Writer
     
   Every five years, at least every 10, something arrives in the mail with unexplainable power. We pick it up, this innocent-looking piece of paper, and we leave today behind.

   We see the words "high school re­union," emblazoned like neon. And before we can let out the breath we've taken in, we're transported, tumbling - away from people who share our lives, from the places we go, from the clothes we wear - into the past.

   Back to those who, if you mentioned ''hamburger day," would think: 'Thursday." And if by chance you said 'lavender hair," they'd nod knowingly, smiling at the thought of your elementary-school music teacher.

   They knew you before your next-door neighbor did, or anyone you work with, or probably even your spouse - when you wore braces, or played basketball. You can picture each other lining up in the grade-school gym - girls on one side, boys on the other - counting back to see whom your square-dance partner would be.

   Together you traipsed hallways, passed notes in class. You agonized over acne, term papers and dates for home­coming.

   Did they know you couldn't say hello to a certain boy without blushing, or sense how sorry you felt when a class­mate's dad died? Could they ever dream some of their names appeared in your diary, the one you locked and hid under your mattress?

   In a way, those years seem a lifetime ago. Yet in another, as if barely a breath has passed.

   One day, the peanut-butter sandwich you made for your child tastes just like the ones your mother made for you. And you turn around, expecting to wrap your hands around the cold glass of milk she's handing you.

   And then you get that notice in the mail, announcing the class of 1974 ­your class - is having its reunion. You catch your breath a little, hardly believing 30 years have passed.

   You read where the gathering will be, when, how much it will cost. Maybe you send in the reply card immediately. Or maybe, like me, you put the invitation aside. Pick it up in a few days. Put it down. Think, nah, then maybe, then maybe not.

   After all, everyone - you included ­- has taken a certain path, made new friends. They have fallen in love with people whose names you may never know, names they still wistfully think of when they hear a certain song or watch the leaves change color.

    They've worked in jobs they've long since forgotten, lost pets and parents, gained self-esteem and maybe a few pounds.

    You don't have a clue what they take in their coffee. You don't know where they were when the Challenger crashed, what they think about when they wake up at 3 a.m. and can't get back to sleep. You don't know which of their dreams they gave up on, which new ones were created in the void.

   Why reconnect? You ask your­self as you drive to work, talk about your weekend with colleagues. You're doing fine these days; you're' happy, and besides, 30 years have passed.

   But though you love the people in your life now, share jokes and concerns and the occasional favorite book, they will never know you like these who shared your childhood.

Curiosity

    So when you hear that a class officer has started a message board, you're curious. And long about the 5,000th posting, you finally take a peek. There's talk of "pre-unions" - get-togethers be­fore the big official reunion week­end. Your more outgoing sister, who graduated with you, had a great time at the first two.

   Then you get an e-mail at work from someone whose name you know, whose dark eyes you immediately remember, whose grandfather was the neighborhood pharmacist - but whom you can't recall ever talking to. He tells you he was hesitant to go to these get­togethers, but now, inexplicably, he's planning them.

You're so taken by his kindness that you call your sister and ask if she'll walk through the door with you. And surprise of surprises, you have fun. You've always been a listener, but you find out you, who were so quiet in high school, can talk to these folks you may have not even said hello to in the hallways.

   Why reconnect? Because something about those e-mails draws you in, something in the air on those autumn nights, some­thing in the stars you can feel, yet can only begin to grasp.

 

   In the process of swapping recollections and catching up on decades gone by, you learn things you never knew about each other's childhoods - the divorces, the sadnesses nobody ever talked about, the joys. And you realize how much everyone does share.

'A simpler time'

   Melinda Hart Ramsey, a Campfire Girl to your Girl Scout, who later kept you silly and sane as your college roommate, finds these re-touching of lives "comforting."
"It was a simpler time for us as children and it makes me yearn for the same. for my children," she says.

   Says Robby Wood, whom you never talked to before the pre­union: "For me, this has been like a snake shedding his skin. The memories, both good and bad, are gone - replaced by the vision of older versions of ourselves, chatting and getting along like old friends, which I believe we are."

   You laugh, you talk, you drink wine. And you learn, in ways you never expected, how everyone really is there for each other.

   When Brian Murray - the scarecrow in your third-grade class's The Wizard of Oz production - has a heart attack during reunion weekend, you thank God he was staying with classmate Paul Bailey, an emergency-room physician. And more than 100 of you sign the get-well card - even though you' may hardly have known him in high school.

    When Billy Morgan - Toto in the same play, a motorcycle kinda guy in high school - hears that a classmate, the beautiful girl with multiple sclerosis, doesn't have a way to get to the reunion, he arranges for a limousine to pick up her and her husband.

    Everyone reaches out, says Betsy Weber Fisher - whom you remember as being the first girl in grade school to defy dress code and wear pants on a cold winter day - "because we started out to­gether."
   "We don't have to start new with those we went to high school with, as we do with others we meet along the way," she says. 'We only have to pick up where we left off and continue on."

Here's why

You reconnect because you're part of each other's lives in ways you know, in ways you're slowly learning. John Traeger - whose straight, straw-colored hair swaying on the basketball court mesmerized the girls even more than his playing - tells you that for years his mother has cut out the newspaper articles you write and sent them to him. You had no idea.

   John's now an attorney in St. Louis, the father of triplets. He likens this, his first reunion, to the start of a good book "that we had to set down for a number of years."
   "Reunions give us the chance to pick the book up again and read a few more chapters," he says. 'We all just want to read more and stay up to the wee hours reading."

   Weeks have passed since he came up to you and reintroduced himself after so many years. Now you're e-mailing each other - not so much to reminisce anymore, but to share stories and feelings, to create a friendship, to plan for your families to get together.

    'Why didn't we ever speak in high school?" he writes one day.

    You've wondered that, too ­ about him; about David Vilches, who first e-mailed you, and now you go to dinner and play cards with him and his wife; about others you hardly knew and now want to know better.

   Yet as the newness, the surprise, the freshness have all evolved into something deeper, you wonder less and less.

   And the answer to the question that once puzzled you seems as clear as that starry autumn evening.

   Why reconnect?

   Because we are all joined, like squares on an afghan, by a strand of yarn that binds us, loosely and tightly, in ways we see and those we don't, in ways we understand, and in others that perhaps we never will.

   Yarn stretches; it gives. We can pull our square this way and that, and in the end, it looks pretty much the same, connected to oth­ers which, together, create a warmth we can always count on, a place we'll always belong.

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