50th High School Reunion

My husband and I spent last Friday and Saturday nights in our old upstate NY hometown celebrating our 50th reunion with our high school classmates.  We went to a small co-ed Catholic high school that had about 300 students.  (It closed years ago and merged with the once-thriving all-boys Catholic high school across town, and enrollment at this new establishment is so much tinier than either of those schools from our day, sadly.)  We were a class of 80; we heard that there were 46 in attendance at Friday's event and 50 at Saturday's. That includes a number of spouses who didn't go to school with us, but not that many, actually (maybe 10?).  So it was a great turn-out. We have only lost two classmates in all these years, and we did raise a glass to toast them on Saturday night. They were missed!

On Friday night, we met at the lake house of a wonderful girl who was always one of the smartest and nicest in the class.  She and her husband live in NC, but they own a Vrbo rental up in NY like we do. In fact, it's just a bit down the road from our Oyster Haven house.  It was so much fun to just hang out with everyone in her lovely home and back yard--with glorious Lake Champlain as a backdrop--reminiscing and catching up. You would think we'd all seen each other just the other day--it was like picking up right where we left off after graduation (with a lot more wrinkles and less and/or graying hair!).  There were margaritas on tap, and appetizers, and pizzas from the downtown Italian restaurant owned by the family of one of our classmates, where we used to go after Friday night football games. The party was officially from 4:00-7:00, but my husband and I weren’t on our way home until about 9:00. A great time was had by all.

We had such a nice class; I think it was rather extraordinary, honestly.  You know how some classes just get along? (I mean, there were different groups of good friends, but no one excluded anyone else from any group and there was none of that "mean girl" stuff or extreme cliquey-ness.)  Teachers liked us, because we weren't troublemakers.  One of our teachers came to the party on Friday.  She was a sophomore homeroom teacher and taught biology, and we were the very first class she had after she got her degree.  She was only about eight years older than we were, and although she was no-nonsense and expected good behavior in her class, she was fun and we could always make her laugh.

Case in point: when we went to take a group picture Friday night, our crazy friend picked her up.  She's such a good sport--look at the way she's laughing! (But I did put that star there because I'm not sure she'd want her hiked-up dress on the Internet!)

Saturday night there were cocktails and a buffet dinner at my sister-in-law's brewery/restaurant.  The people who'd been in charge of organizing this reunion really went above and beyond with the set-up and decorations. Everything looked amazing.  And there were so many nostalgia-inducing items on display, all kinds of memorabilia from our high school days.  I was tickled to see that they'd used the artwork I did for the cover of our senior yearbook to decorate wine bottles donated by a guy in our class, boxes of chocolate truffles donated by a gal in our class, and the top of the sheet cake. (I was accused of depicting my boyfriend and myself when I drew that yearbook cover; and while I don't think I MEANT to do that, consciously...I believe that might be what I did!) 

I wore a dress I've had for a while that I just love, because it's so loose and flowy and comfy, and the print is so pretty...and it must be a popular style, because three of us at the party were dressed almost identically.  LOL!

Another teacher of ours (our English teacher, who was also quite young when she taught our class) was there to celebrate with us that night. The grandson and son-in-law of our late classmate DJ'd the party, and they played some of the oldies-but-goodies from our era. There was even some dancing.  It really was just so much fun, and I'll never forget it.   I'm so grateful to have been able to grow up with this amazing group of people and so happy that my husband and I were able to be there to celebrate the 50th anniversary of our graduation from a high school that will always hold a special place in our hearts.  We were the lucky ones, I tell you.  The seventies were actually a pretty sweet time to be a teenager. Things seemed so much simpler then.  We spent our days together at school, but we mostly left it all behind when we went home to our families.  No Facebook.  No social media posting.  No constant texts and phone calls.  (Well, full disclosure: there were frequent too-long phone calls with my high school sweetheart, whispering in corners with the landline phone cord stretched as far as it could go...ha ha, those were the days...)

I only have a few regrets about the reunion.  I wish I'd asked more questions about what different folks were up to. Afterward, I thought of all the missed opportunities for finding out about what's been going on in people's lives.  It's not that I didn't have some nice conversations, I did; but I wish I'd talked more. I've never been the best at the spoken word (give me a pen and paper--or a keyboard—and I do much better). I usually think of things I should have said hours after a conversation ends.  

I also wish everyone could have been there.  We were missing some of our classmates dearly.  One of them, our prom king who is always in the mix when anything is being planned for our class, lost his father shortly beforehand and obviously couldn't be there.  That left a bit of a hole. 

But God willing, there will be more reunions!  In general, the people I went to high school with are looking pretty fit and healthy.  (68 is the new 48! That's my story, and I'm sticking to it!)  We've all changed physically in the 50 years since our graduation, because how could we not?  But it's amazing how in some ways everyone seems just the same...as if we were back in those good old days, young, with our whole lives ahead of us.  I love how much these people whose lives are forever intertwined with mine still seem to look and speak and act just like those kids I knew long ago, when I was about the age of my oldest granddaughters. (Incredibly, those granddaughters are the very age their Papa and I were when we started dating!)

I’m not surprised that our reunion was such a success. That’s our class for you.

I think I'll end this with a ChatGPT version of our group picture that someone made and posted on Facebook.  (I'm not on there anymore, and I took almost no pictures, which is so unlike me.  So I've been relying on my sister to scope out our class FB page for photos and send them on to me.)

If only my real hair could ever look as good as it does in this picture!

Lookin' good, gang.  God bless the Class of 1976!