Homecoming
October 6, 2021
I’ve been thinking about my high school reunion since the invitation came last May.
There was Covid to consider. And the memory of the last one I attended where the night ended with me falling up my friends stairs and splitting my forehead open. There was the twenty pounds I wanted to lose, and the people I didn’t want to see, and the people I missed.
One night, I finally clicked yes on the Evite, knowing I could always cancel. It was late Spring of 2021; I wanted a plan to get out of town and see some faces that I hadn’t been seeing for the past year and a half.
Amy, one of my best friends, still lives in Mountain Lakes, and she volunteered to go along, even though she wasn’t in my class, and isn’t much for cocktail parties.
A week before the party, my friend came to visit me in Boston. Taylor, Amy’s daughter, had been found in bed by her roommate, unable to open her eyes and mumbling into her pillow. Her roommate called an ambulance.
Before she left, she laughed nervously in my living room and asked me- “Maybe you can come down anyway next weekend? And take care of me? While I look after Taylor? I mean, I know you have your reunion…” I hugged her and thought there was no way I’d drive five hours, miss a party that I had given up Ben and Jerry’s for, (mostly), so she could lean on me while her daughter recovered from a really bad case of the flu?
It wasn’t a bad case of the flu.
On the Thursday before the reunion, I flew to New Jersey. Amy’s husband picked me up at the airport. On the way home we talked about my daughter’s SAT scores, how much harder it is to pack for travel by plane than to load up a car, and that my husband thinks Facebook updates on his phone are actually text messages to him. No one knew what was wrong with Taylor for a while. Now they think it’s encephalitis. Tonight, John, Amy’s husband, let me know Taylor hasn’t had any seizures all day. This has made all of us who love her giddy with joy.
She hadn’t had any seizures for twelve hours. It’s going to be a long time before she gets better. It’s going to be a long time before she comes home.
I didn’t visit Taylor. I stayed home and matched socks, made smoothies, one bad pot roast, a salad of strawberries and goat cheese, and enough Bolognese sauce to last them until spring. Or until I go back.
I made it to the reunion. I found friends I didn’t know I had, and connected with people that I love as much as I did when I was in high school, when most Saturday afternoon’s we’d drink too much beer and exchange drunken, slobbering hugs, while declaring undying affection. Since I’ve only stayed in touch with a few, it was nice to know that those promises all those years ago were true. My affection for these people is undying and I am glad to know, and have known them.
I’ve changed a lot since then, I guess we all have. But when I stood in that room, I knew I’d made it to Homecoming, even though it had taken a long time to figure out what that means. These people knew the awkward, bumbling seventeen year old and were happy to see the tired, worried, friend who badly needed a night out. I didn’t get the chance to talk in depth with many, and I regret that. I was distracted with guilt about being away from Amy and John and trying to decide if my outfit looked better without the sweater.
When I walked up Amy’s stairs that night, and Gigi greeted me at the door, I was home there too.Home is where we choose to be, where we offer and accept love or acceptance. Where we pretend to remember things we don’t remember, and when someone gets drunk, we drive them home, partly because we don’t want them to get sick in our car, partly because that is what we do for the people who have known us our whole lives, and remember what we looked like with big hair and braces, and partly because a lot of us have been the drunk in the room that needed a ride.
These days, I have a crooked smile, I can’t wear heels. I could still lose another twenty pounds, I’m a little pissed off that I work out every single day and I will never, ever have Michelle Obama arms. One of my classmates does, and I adore her anyway. I will not share her name but we all know who I’m talking about.
Thanks for being there, my friends. And for those of you who couldn’t be, I hope to see you the next time. I like us better now. Please, let me know if you ever get up to Boston, or are driving through on your way somewhere else. I would like to hear what you’ve been doing all these years, and I’m sorry there wasn’t more time.
I think I’ll go to the next one, I can’t wait for the next one.
And thank you, Amy and John. It is an honor to be there for you. I changed my cell phone settings so you can call anytime. You have your own ringtone. Call anytime.
Taylor, girl, come home soon. You have the best home in the world, or it will be, when you are back in it.
Mixed Emotions/ I’m going to my high school reunion in two weeks.
September 19, 2021
I live in Massachusetts and I grew up, mostly, in Jersey.
But Facebook means that even though it’s been years, I know that Jim is a doctor and just got divorced. Laurie just had a grandchild, Emma is a professor and Allan is killing it in real estate.
Facebook means there is a place where everyone from Mountain Lakes shares memories, obits, updates and asks for help- tracking down an old friend, prayers during a battle with cancer, supporting a business, a page, or a cause.
This is the thing, and I’m being careful because the reunion is next week, and I love my hometown. I have connected with people on social media who I didn’t know when I saw them every damn day in the hallways at the high school or in the parking lot at Del’s Village.
When people reminisce about Mountain Lakes, many talk about the town, and their youth, as if it was a spectacular aberration.
Yes, we had parties, and people played guitar. Yes, the parties were really good parties, and the Stanfield’s were the coolest family in the world, they had a fire pit, an open door policy, and their kids were and are some of the best, smartest, funniest, and most amazing people I know, as well as you can know someone years after you shared a beer with them in their backyard.
The football team won all their games. We skated all winter and swam all summer. We went to the Market for sandwiches and Roma for pizza, and the pizza was better than any pizza I’ve had since, including New York. Well, maybe NY pizza was a little bit better, I’m in Massachusetts. I’m deprived.
Mr. Fox was a magical art teacher. I remember what Mrs. Smith taught me in freshman English. Mr. Hoke recited Shakespeare in a baritone that I can still hear. There were bluegrass festivals two towns over, New York City was a bus ride away, I wrote poems on scraps of paper and people read them and said nice things, even though I don’t think they were that good.
I have pictures of me smiling in a black tuxedo and fishnets during something called GAA. a competition between two teams, Blue and the Orange, that happened each spring after months of preparation. Each team would pick a story, and perform it, like a musical with the songs being used as vehicles for different dances and gymnastics. I was excited when I made the the modern dance team, even though I was picked as second substitute. There’s a photo in the yearbook, I had thick thighs and a huge smile. (I didn’t smile between the ages of fourteen and eighteen, or so I’m told, but in that picture, I’m grinning.
Yes, it was a magical wonderful time. But it wasn’t all bonfires and pancake breakfasts.
It was being picked last at gym. Starting to drink beer because it made me a little less shy. Getting crappy grades because I always forgot my textbooks in my rush to be on time to watch General Hospital, bumming cigarettes during lunch, people getting sick of me bumming cigarettes during lunch, getting pinkeye every summer from swimming at Island Beach, not eating much and lying on the floor to put on my jeans because I’d had cereal for breakfast. Smoking pot and feeling dumb. Taking up beer and Marlboro lights with the enthusiasm some reserved for field hockey and making the honor roll. Not ever having a clue about what was coming next or where I wanted to land.
These memories aren’t specific to being a young person in Mountain Lakes. They aren’t specific to being young in the 80’s, young and privileged, young and female.
They are just some of the things I think of when I look back.
For many people, in Mountain Lakes, NJ, and Milton, Massachusetts, our memories are where we like to linger because now is so damned hard.
We tell ourselves and our children about life back then, and it all sounds glorious.
But I’m pretty sure we leave stuff out, or forget the worst. I do.
Because the now, with the sore hip and the Covid, the retirement looming and the dental bills mounting- it’s nice to look back to anything other than what I see in the mirror before I’m ready to look.
I just wanted to say Mountain Lakes was a great place to grow up. So is Milton. So are a million other places.
But, it was’t perfect. For me anyway. I still can’t wait to go back.
It will be nice to walk down the Boulevard and stand on the beach by Birchwood Lake.
It will be good to see people in three dimensions, especially after this past year. It will be nice to look back on all of the hard parts, the stuff I’d never talk about on Facebook, or with anyone. For me, growing up was one quarter bliss and Bruce Springsteen and three quarters braces and diets, wondering what to say next and wishing I’d said something else or nothing at all.
I’m grown, and I’m in pretty good place right now.
It’ll be nice to take a weekend to remember how I got here.
julierichmond 