Angela Kelsey

Tell the Story

Reunion

Filed in Stories :: December 3, 2012

I left south Florida at 8:30 on the morning after Thanksgiving, and I was landing here again fewer than 36 hours later, at 8 on Saturday night.  A week later I have a sense of what took me back  to a very different “south”–South Carolina–and what I brought back home with me.

There were name tags to help us remember our natural hair color:

 

Thirty-six of eighty-nine former classmates smiled for the cameras:

With the exception of my friend Michelle, I hadn’t seen my classmates since graduation.

We talked about where we live, whom we live with, our families, what we’ve been doing since we graduated from high school.

Even though I had been separated from them by geography and time, I realized that those relationships–close friends, casual acquaintances, and people whose lives I only imagined–shaped me and many of my core beliefs about myself and the world. Some of those beliefs I still hold onto, and some have been dismantled by life, but their origins were with me last weekend and are here in this picture.

I would have liked more time with my former classmates, a second night of reuniting, maybe, when, thirty years of ice having been broken or at least chipped, I could learn more about their lives. Today I received a newsletter with more of the stories I wanted.

And I have a clearer understanding of who I am and where I’ve been because of reconnecting with some of the people who surrounded me when I was seventeen.

 

Filed in Stories

2 Comments

  1. wholly jeanne

    It’s funny how that works isn’t it? I didn’t attend any of my high school reunions because, well, it wasn’t divorces that kept me away. Let’s leave it at that. But I went this past October and had a really good time. There’s something good and solid about reconnecting with these people from a part of my life I remember but really don’t want to go back to. They knew me then, and they’ve either forgotten or lost me anyway;) I do wish there’d been time to swap stories, though, instead of photos of kids. I wanted to hear about them – what they’ve been doing, how they came to be doing that, what they’d like to do with the rest of their life . . . I don’t really care about their children, I want to hear the stories of my classmates. Glad you went, glad you had an enjoyable time. xo

  2. little light

    fashioned by what we loved and loathed..
    If the view was that clear, I am glad…