16/09/2011

Reunions and the point of no return

Seattle. We're staying in a great basement apartment on 92nd for the next couple of nights. M. Lee found it on AirBnB, which is the place to look if you want cool, cheap lodging. I'm here to attend my high school reunion tomorrow night. I'm a bit apprehensive. I was a total outsider so it's not like I'm here to re-live a lot of happy memories but I grew up with these people and, even though they are all basically strangers, I am interested to see some of them again before, you know, we're all dead. Also, and on a coldly voyeuristic note, there is a delicious ghost-like, time-travel quality to reunions that adds a curiously attractive twist. I didn't go to the big cocktail party get together tonight though. M. Lee and I had veggie pho at a tiny pho house on Capitol Hill instead. It's been a long drive wrapping up our summer travels, Nevada to Centroamerica to Florida to Seattle with points in between and today's leg of that journey was enough for one day.

Also some of the people from my Catholic elementary school days want to meet for brunch tomorrow before the Big Event but I'm passing on that too. And after brunch a few of them are going to visit some of our teachers at the old nuns home. It would almost be worth it to see them without their habits. They were always so mysterious in their black Bride of Christ head to toe robes, stiffly starched white bonnets, collars and huge crosses with the limp body of Christ nailed to the huge crosses laying where their breasts should be... but not this time... and probably not ever. I don't believe in putting people or animals in zoos, for Christ sake. I don't have anything to say to them. I'm not Catholic anymore. I'm not even Christian any more. It was bad enough visiting the Dallas Krishna Temple. They all want to believe you still belong but you don't.

6 comments:

Don said...

For me anyway the attraction of a reunion is the otherwise unlikely experience of gathering with a bunch of people from the same time and place. It's rare to happen upon someone who grew up in Berkeley (though it's not that small a town) and so it's cool to be in a room full of such people. I do not go for the old connections -- they're really not that important. However the informal pre-gatherings can be the most rewarding.

asha said...

Don, it would be different (easier) if I drank but I don't, which is a good thing but without the social lubricant it makes the prospect of standing around with no one to talk to pretty daunting.

Roy said...

At the worst, egos trying to feed on very, very old carrion. At best, some people who remember what you remember, which can be fun.

asha said...

Roy, more often they are people who remember what I don't remember, which is a bit weird but also fun.

Kimberlee said...

Reunions at my age are gross. It's really just a bunch of people taking stock of where they are in their lives the comparison of life to life is unsettling.

I am very much looking forward to our reunion though:)

Bob said...

Reunions work the way you said. The time-space thing. A mobius strip may deposit faces for your perusal but try not to fret because they will be wondering what you think of them and how far they have come in life, etc.

Nuns. We had them in primary school. Imagine... they marry Christ, they say.