July 10, 2023: Chances to Do Better -

Our 50^th high school reunion had two parts – Friday afternoon in the back garden of the Roanoke Tavern, and Saturday night at the big community center. The first person I saw on Friday recognized me. He introduced himself, and I froze. He said, “You don’t remember me, do you?” and I said, “No, no, I do, really, I am just getting used to being here,” or something equally odd.

Actually, I was at a loss for words. At an earlier reunion, one classmate did a Rumplestiltskin thing on me: didn’t wear a name tag, told me I had the evening to guess his name, kept circling around to see how I was doing. It turned out that he had been buddies with my neighbor. That neighbor was now shaking my hand.

I’d planned to go to THIS reunion and greet Rumplestiltskin warmly, by name, sortof sharing the joke with him. That’s the best part of reunions, when it happens – seeing people being grownups in the best way. But then the pre-reunion emails listed him under “Classmates Who Have Died.” Too late to do better. I searched out his obituary. And it seemed cold – short, colorless, no favorite charities. It avoided “cause of death” so thoroughly that I thought he’d killed himself.

So here I am in the first sixty seconds, shaking hands with my former neighbor - Rumplestiltskin’s old pal - knowing it would be gauche to start the evening off with, “Hi, good to see you, what happened to your friend and why didn’t he get a warmer obit?” Unfortunately, that was all my brain was offering, and suppressing it left me speechless.

Somebody else squeezed past, the deck shuffled, things perked up. Everybody was so nice, comfortable, open. Some people remembered each other, some didn’t. I failed to recognize Facebook friends, and they forgave me. Crushes were confessed, stories were told. Non-attendees were verified safe: She’s okay, just in Spain; He’s great, but on a big sailing trip; He’s fine and lives just down the road, but can’t abide reunions! Laughs were had. It was wonderful.

Many men were hard to place, partly because they wore baseball caps, mirror shades, and/or 68-year-old-guy facial hair. So the rest of us were supposed to recognize their nose and ears, no mean feat. (Sorry.) They were taller than I remembered, and I was gazing up at them in surprise. I didn’t think men generally shot up after age 18. Took me a week to realize it wasn’t them; it was me. I’ve gotten shorter.

One great exchange was with a classmate who congratulated me on my career as a professional dancer. I said, “I think you are thinking of someone else.” She said, “Nuh-UH!!”

Someone I’d been friends with in second grade, before my family moved a few miles and I was in a new grade school, asked, “Where did you GO?!? We missed you!” I was so touched. I still remember being sad and self-conscious as the new kid, but I hadn’t realized anyone missed me. 

I spent some quality time standing off to the side with a woman who was very shy in high school. We were side by side, looking at the crowd, trying to identify people. It was fun, and we did pretty well.

Then she told me I’d always been one of her favorites, and I got tongue-tied again, feeling that I ought to say, Oh, you were one of mine, TOO, but knowing that would ring false. It was like the time a work colleague said in a meeting, “You guys are my BEST FRIENDS,” and all I could think was, Oh, I really hope we aren’t.

So that was night one. But thanks to the amazing work of the organizers, bless them, there was a night two. The cast of characters changed a bit, but now I had my “add fifty years” mental mechanism oiled up, and I recognized people more easily. At the height of the noise, I found myself greeting one of our teenage free-thinkers “HOW ARE YOU?” He answered, “I’M DYING!”

He seemed so pleased about it, and I thought: Ah, ever the philosopher! I shouted back, “ME, TOO!” I mean, we all are, everyone around me had aged well or less-well, I'd just learned a dear friend had a tumor, and there was a poster board in the next room with yearbook headshots of everyone who had Gone Before Us.  Pretty easy to acknowledge the obvious.

I’d spent some time overnight thinking about how I’d flubbed my moments with the shy woman and the former neighbor, and hoping I’d get a second chance to talk to them. Fortunately, they both came to Saturday night gathering, so I found them.  

To her, I got to say, “I felt bad last night when you said I’d been one of your favorites. I don’t think I was much of a friend to YOU, back in the day.” She said I shouldn’t feel bad; she hadn’t HAD friends. I said, Still, I could have done better by you. Odd as the conversation was, it felt good to have it. We agreed to hang out again next time, if there is a next time and we both make it.

Then I found Rumplestiltskin’s pal and said Sorry about that frozen greeting last night. I told him how his friend had pranked me at an earlier reunion. He loved that. We talked about our families, and where we lived now - all the reunion topics. Finally, I circled back to the topic of Rumplestiltskin and said that his obituary had seemed secretive to me, and he nodded, and said Yes, it was - he died of AIDS.  And then he said, “Which doesn’t make SENSE! He had a wife and daughter!”

It just made me sad – sad for the guy who hadn't known his friend all that well and still couldn't get his head around it, sad for everyone who didn’t make it to the reunion, sad for how we treated queer kids and how we still do, sad for people who are in the closet even with their friends, sad that whoever wrote that obit was so stingy about a whole life, sad that we stigmatize certain diseases. Portland’s Pride Parade is next weekend. At least now there are Pride Parades, I guess. But we have such a long way to go. I hope we all take whatever opportunities we get to be better grown-ups, and better friends to each other.