Entitled: Queen E's Twenty-Fifth Reunion of the Class of '81
Subtitled: Now The F Word Has 5 Letters and Rhymes With Nifty.
OK. Easy enough. Sit down and try and write a blurb about your high school reunion. Give those who were there a reminder of the frivolity, and for those who weren't, a sense of it's splendor. Try not to be overbearing, balance the personal with the universal, the hilarity with the solemnity. Try and pull yourself out of the chaos of the present moment and focus on last October and the events of twenty-five, twenty-six and twenty seven years ago.
And suddenly a month goes by and I still haven't sent got the damn file off to Dennis.
Focus. Plunge. Here goes. An essay and a ramble:
Start with a poem (add a sprinkle of Dave Matthews if you need it):
The class of '81 as satellites
Offspring of a common launch
We take our orbits
Some faster
Some slower
Some space junk.
Floating in our home amongst the stars.
--
"What about geo-stationary?" says Derek.
"What about 'spy'?", I counter. "or geo-stationery (satellites made from recycled paper)."
--
The fundamental elements – West Hillhurst, University Heights, St. Andrews Heights and Hounsfield Heights, producing an odd sort of molecular attraction. A place where likes and unlikes bonded. A mad, inner-city Calgarian chemistry experiment.
So high school. What's the big deal? The answer isn't obvious. It was only 3 years. These days, sometimes by the time I've taken the garbage to the top of the driveway, 3 years have gone by. OK, but this was the 3 years where we went from being kids to being adults (don't believe me, picture yourself in grade 10. In gym class. In your shorts. Enough?) This was when we were incomplete, either by lack of a partner or peace of mind, when all our pieces weren't quite up and running together (there's another image of gym class), where we were caught in the most complicated social scene we've ever experienced. Each of us, on our own, trying to find balance. This was the time when we were immortal and untested, fresh with enthusiasm and potential.
Perhaps the reunion is the time to confront the jury of the peers and years and measure ourselves? Or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it's just a flow of experience to reconnect friendship, compassion and humour. I think I like that one better. We all write our own life stories. Choose the good bits.
Time for the stage play:
Scene 1: A pleasant fall day, shortly after sunset, 7 pm Queen Elizabeth Senior High. A number of small groups of people are walking toward the steps and front doors of a large two-storey brick school. The sounds of laughter and conversation are heard as soon as one of the large wooden doors is opened.
Walking in through the front doors on Friday evening into a crowd of 60 or 70 was pleasantly bewildering. Seeing all those people again. All your predictions quashed within seconds. There are the ones who haven't changed. Same hair, same look, same laugh. The ones with the same face but the silver locks. Crows feet. The ones who have mysteriously grown while out of memory and the ones who have shrunk. The moment of first facing an old friend as his face morphs from the young to the present – taking a few seconds to finally settle. Those who carry the personality but appear as artist's renditions of their former selves. The reinvented, confident and more comfortable now (I think each of us carries a part of this). Everyone gradually reshaping and aligning. A visual and social recalibration.
(Gabriel Garcia Marquez in A Hundred Years of Solitude has a character that only comes in to existence when people think of her. Cool to think we went to high school with people like that. )
There were those who remained in the hallway party by the front doors, but I seem to have ended up wandering the halls with various small groups of people, random snippets of the social fabric. Looking at hall photos, wandering the gym. One particularly strange moment was being reunited with a yearbook cover that I drew in grade eight, painted on the wall on the way down to the cafeteria. Try that one on. Pick something of your grade eight school work, blow it up six feet high on the wall, and leave it in a public place for twenty-five years. Essays, poetry, art, science reports. I'm sure they'd all work.
I had moments of connection and disconnect. Momentarily forgetting Kathy's name as a group of us wandered. "You forgot my name, you're so LAME!" I had nothing to explain, except the momentary gap of recollection. Clark, approaching from a distance, the new Clark, the 2006, the universe where Clark has a beard. The Woolners and Cummings, a sensible familiar grouping. Dennis Kwan, Michelle, Diana (or should I say the Dianas) Dennis, well-dressed in a blazer and looking satisfied (and rightly so). Mike Amann, a resident of Paradise Rossland, absolutely inspired with his beautiful wife and daughter. Tyler appears from San Fran, big finance gig, taller than memory, observing. Shannon and then Robbie Scarrett. The timeless Scarett who pursued and succeeded in his dream of flying. And Jonathan, Morley, Rose, Danny, Cindi, Ingrid, and Kent and Patti and Sydney and Dawn and Joni (my crainiotomy co-conspirator). Lawrence of Arabia. Lavina of Kazakhstan.
If I keep going two things will happen:
I'll end up mentioning someone who wasn't there (or who wasn't there and wasn't dead) and forget to mention someone I had a long intense conversation with. Years later I'll run into her/him in some bar in the Yucatan, and they'll say "Ya, know Lawrence, after we talked at the reunion, I immediately quit my job and moved my family to Bhutan. That really turned my life around." In fine form, I'll have absolutely no clue what this person is talking about (having had that part of my brain removed ; ) ) and as we talk I'll still be trying to remember her/his name. This is my curse, but at least it seems to have a positive effect on people.
Scene 2: A crowded basement bar room. Fifty or so people are crowded around a number of high, circular tables. There are a number of empty glasses on each table and here and there an empty jug, suggesting they have been here for some time. It's Friday night, quite late.
We decompressed at Stadium Keg replacing dissolved nitrogen in our blood with CO2 and fermented hops. The chamber forced us back to a familiar distance, where windowless and timeless seemed to mean the same thing. Timeless until the child / bartender tells me he's just graduated from Queen E.
Scene 3: A catering hall somewhere in the South East, near the Calgary Zoo and Crown Surplus. Something between a warehouse space and an art gallery. Brightly lit, not really restaurant, more wedding reception, large round tables seating ten, a lectern and microphone. Chrome stacking chairs, a couple of portable bars with attendants and a coat rack near the door.
Saturday dinner was the peak performance. For those who organized it, thank-you, our dinner turned out to be what most wedding receptions aspire to be:lively, entertaining, powerful and profound. Crowded, a hundred or more, and vibrant . Boisterous conversation. We gravitated to our most obvious social roots, but social lines blurred, as the beer and wine flowed. I hadn't realized that I'd missed some of these people. That seems kind of obvious, but it wasn't until then. What's more, I hadn't realized that there were people here that I wish I had known better. Even now we see each other in passing. We're too busy to stop and talk, because of the other connections. That's a strange longing for a common past with someone that you knew but never had a chance to connect with. (If that's not a high school-type thought, I don't know what is ) And we didn't have time to talk to everyone. Too much to say, too many faces. Moments of a kind of electric reconnection. Moments of realizing common ground. And then it struck me:
As a group we get along far better now than we ever did in high school.
Something to do with compassion. Or mortality. Many of us became mortal with the birth of our children or the death of a friend. I became mortal at 23 with the death of my parents.
As our reception went on, the energy built. After dinner speeches (and please excuse my sleep-deprived ramble - real time video is so unforgiving) gave way to the feature act. As our own poetry slam champion, Trevor annihilated us with a stunning barrage of linguistic image and wit. From the heartfelt reflections of his mother's death from smoking, to lewd descriptions of what he might do on his bosses desk to show his contempt for the corporation, his words were a roller-coaster of images, coming far too fast. This was the human experience at full throttle with no punches pulled. Twenty-five years have raced by and now in this room of frenetic poetry we too, relate our stories of success and career, of sickness and loss, of the death of a child, an abusive partner, of loves lost and loves won and loves unrequited, of an aneurysm and of brain cancers, of loneliness and disillusionment, of addiction and conquest and rescue, of waking each morning to greet the magic of a child, of turning points, of points of reflection and remembrance. And of music.
Music has an incredible transcendent quality to bring the past into the light (sorry Bono). Kevin and George's low-key acoustic set was perfect, intimate and casual. Two guys, a bit grey on the edges, finding humour and connection with the guitar. The Pharmacist and Lawyer singing "I Want to Be Dentist". There's still time ; )
Denoument: (noun) the final part of a play, movie or narrative in which the strands of the plot are drawn together and matters are explained or resolved.
Our reception ended at a beautiful peak, but there was more to come. As the designated driver for some slightly toasted middle-aged men (don't you love that word, I'll use it again just to make you squirm – middle-aged), we did what any good eighteen-year-olds might attempt:
We stayed up all night and played guitars and laughed ourselves silly.
Picture this, you're in the kitchen of a well-adorned new home, somewhere in 'way-hell-and-gone" Silver Springs. It's five in the morning and you're singing the longest rendition of "Fox on the Run" the world has ever experienced, in four part harmony, Four parts if you count the falsetto "Foxxy I don't run....." line. Just a minute, let's bring it back:
"Fox on the run,
you scream and everybody comes,
a runnin'
Take a run and hide yourself away ..."
I think you're feeling it.
You look beside you, and you can think of no stranger sight. Brian Kingwell is beside you and yes, Brian is singing (you've seen the bumper sticker, "Dance like no one is watching"). Brian is singing like no one is listening ; )
That's how good it was.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
Well my missed friends and those who I regret I haven't known better,
Let's let our reunion provoke future connections.
All the best from sunny Bowen Island,
Lawrence