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| Ready to take on the world! |
Until last year, I was a Michigan resident my entire life and class reunions were a hop, skip and jump to a place to socialize with people who were in the trenches with me during my most formative years. This year I will drive home 9 hours from Tennessee with my family to attend. Yes, I'm coming home to eat turkey with my beloved family.
Mainly, though....it's about coming HOME and reflecting on the person I am now, compared to the person I was in 1981...when my skin was tighter, I weighed less and I had higher expectations about that big wide open world I was about to step into.
Thirty years ago we were, all of us in our own ways, adventurers. Playing it safe didn't yet occur to us. We didn't have mouths to feed, mortgages to pay or calories to count. We were invincible. We were immortal. We didn't think about the fact that we would someday be saying final farewells to parents, siblings, or friends with whom we grew up. We never expected we would someday be staring into a mirror and seeing...(another gasp) our OWN parents!
And while many classmates might be eating skinless white meat or skipping that extra slice of pumpkin pie as they frantically diet before the big "reveal" day, I will be enjoying my Thanksgiving meal and relishing who I am today, not dwelling on who I used to be and hiding who I've morphed into. Several times throughout this past year I've reminded myself about the upcoming reunion and I've chastized myself for not working out more often in preparation of "the big day." Now, thankfully, that ship has sailed. There are school functions to attend, dance classes, carpooling, dinners to be made, writing and other such passions that take up my precious time. Making healthy food choices these days is more about teaching my 6-year-old to eat healthfully rather than my own vanity. A nice long walk to clear my head & the occasional kickboxing session is about the best I can squeeze in.
There is something very liberating about this reunion, as opposed to my 10 or even my 20-year reunion. I now (finally) realize that the people who matter most in my life will continue to love me as they did when I was that young whippersnap of a girl no matter who I am or what I look like and if not, well then, they never mattered to me in the first place. Ten years ago I was STILL an unmarried career woman. I did not want my lifelong friends to see that maybe I wasn't 108 lbs anymore or notice any signs that I was approaching the dreaded 4-0. Looking back now, I laugh at how scared I was of that approaching decade of my life.
Now I realize that for me, my 40s were the most defining years of my life personally. I married at 39, I had my daughter at nearly 42 and I am now a busy wife & school mom TRYING to turn my years of journalism and public relations into success as a freelance writer.
Still....for many of my fellow classmates who started the marriage and /or parenting phase of their lives earlier, the 40s are a time of dealing with the same teenaged angst from their kids that they put their own parents through. Others who chose different paths have had their own stuggles. Maybe they chose NOT to marry, which was perfectly fine. Some had great jobs and succeeded, others lost jobs, ended marriages or buried loved ones. Others have fought back against major illnesses & won or are currently fighting them now. At this point in my own life I've seen and experienced many of the same things. The point is, we are fortunate to still be here at all. Many of our classmates are already gone and will be there with us in spirit only.
Time has a way of humbling us all. Life has a way of beating us down and then every once in a while, something will lift us up again. Seeing lifelong friends who knew me way back when is what personally lifts ME up and for this reason, I'm going back to the place where, both physically and emotionally, I believed life held so many promises. It still does, only we are older now and with experience we often become jaded.
For me, I have no reason to come as anyone other than the person that I am today. Do I miss my tighter skin, toned arms and sparking smile sans crow's feet? Of course! Do I miss that all enough to say I'm not going back there to see everyone because they'll judge me? HELL NO! Because with age also comes confidence. Will people say "wow, he's gone bald or gee, she's gained weight!" Sadly, yes. We may not think so but we are ALL guilty of judging others, even if it's silently to ourselves. Will we, however, also say "...look how far we've come..."? Again....a resounding YES.
Which is why I'm saying that while a lot of pressure seems to be placed on people to attend their 25th reunions sporting buffed bodies, fancy clothes, pictures of our perfect families and impressive business cards showing what we've DONE with our lives, the 30th is a chance for us to just come back together as we are today and reminisce (and dare I say laugh) at who we were in 1981.
If you've never attended a class reunion, I challenge you to do so. You will be amazed at how differently you will be received by your classmates now as opposed to back in the day when you sat at the loner lunchroom table and tried to hide your braces and zits.
I had one classmate say to me in no unceratin terms that he/she has "nothing to show for the last 30 years." HUH? How can any of us say such a thing? Just being here matters! We all thought we'd turn out differently, no matter WHAT we've done with our lives. And therein lies the beauty of seeing the friends with whom we started our life's journey, in the first place.
And to my fellow classmates from John Glenn High School, whom I'll see in a few short weeks even though I'm still trying to find the perfect little black dress...I say WELCOME HOME and I can't wait to see "y'all" over Thanksgiving weekend....party ON!!
