Saturday, July 03, 1999

25th reunion: Time to take stock

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BY KRISTA RAMSEY
The Cincinnati Enquirer

        The letter comes in the mail, jolting us from our daily routine. It says it has been 25 years since we graduated from high school. Someone has been keeping track of these things. Life is flying by.

        Each summer, perhaps a quarter of us are faced with the emotional business of reuniting with people from our past. There are family reunions, high school reunions, college reunions and informal gatherings of old chums from childhood or the neighborhood.

        Reunions prompt a backwardlook, initially into a mirror. We may still be the person we were in high school, but these are definitely not the same hips.

        We are forced to confront changes that our growing farsightedness has, until now, benevolently allowed us to avoid. Scalp gleaming through our hair. Small pouches puckering at the edges of our mouths. Shiny skin on our forearms that reminds us a bit of Great-Aunt Ella.

        In fact, the physical changes are only the first stage of the reunion acclimation process, and perhaps the easiest. Having a time by which to measure the passing of our life kicks up a variety of emotional issues.

        First, we can't help thinking about who we were then.

Another world
        Hurtling from our children's baseball game to their orthodontist appointment, or stuck in traffic on the grinding drive home from work, we have trouble remembering the carefree days of our youth.

        Was there a time when the only domestic property we were responsible for was our own bedroom? Could there have been a day when we honestly didn't know how to use a food processor, had never heard of a downspout?

        Weekends were for parties then, not trimming hedges or paying bills. We not only had hours to spend talking to friends, but hours of things to say to them.

        Dreams came easily. The future lay before us.

        The intimacy of those days is a contributing factor to reunion anxiety. These are people who, at one place in our life, knew our shoe size, last date, favorite eight-track and virtually everything that hung within our closet. Now we're wondering if we can maintain a two-hour conversation with them.

        We rack our minds to remember where everyone went after graduation. We wonder who is the richest, the most ambitious, the most successful. We wonder who achieved their potential.

        Which leads to the most crucial reunion question: Have we?

The might-have-beens
        The most uncomfortable function of a reunion is that it reunites us with ourselves. Our old selves. And the selves we could have been.

        Really, we are not so gravely concerned with what old classmates think of what we've done with our lives. But we are hoping rather desperately that we have not disappointed ourselves.

        Did we make the right choices? Have we had enough adventures? Did we take too many wrong turns, too many foolish risks, waste precious time? Did we miss out on the right career, city, house?

        And what if it's all still out there, waiting to be had?

        That — not what to wear to the gathering — is the most treacherous, gut-wrenching and exciting facet of reunion thinking. It can push us out of our rut, into the exhilarating and discomforting realization that our lives are not yet done.

        That, much as our children would be shocked at the notion, we are still developing creatures.

        That we can still take a sharp turn off the straight road, even in our mini-vans.

        That we are still capable of surprising somebody. Maybe even ourselves.

        So it's been 25 years. Or 40. Or 50. George Eliot had it right. It's never too late to be what you might have been.

        Krista Ramsey's column appears on Saturdays. Write her at 312 Elm Street, Cincinnati 45202.

        Krista Ramsey's column appears on Saturdays. Write her at the Enquirer, 312 Elm St. Cincinnati 45202.

RAMSEY ARCHIVE