life

Check Your Bags. And I Love You.

/ Elizabeth Gaucher / 19 Comments

I’m starting to realize I actually am not opposed to this “getting older” thing.  This past weekend was my 25th high school reunion, and it was simply marvelous.

I remember being 18 years old and looking at people in their 40s and feeling so sad for them.  Their lives were over.  They had to work, most of them had children who were wearing them out, they had no idea how to dress properly and they were getting kind of grey and wrinkly.  Not me!  I was the opposite of all of that, and I could see them looking at me with some envy.  I believed I was in the best place in the world, and they were on the down slope to nowhere.

The thing is, when you are young, you can only look at things you’ve never been and guess what they are.  You take your experience, which is profoundly limited, and you make your best guess.  You don’t know what it’s like to get older.  But when you are older, ahh…….now I can see.  You can look back at your early years with knowledge.  That look of envy?  Not exactly.  It’s the look of the bittersweet happiness you feel when you think of who you were back then, and the irreplaceable warmth of gratitude for who you are now because of it.

In essence, it’s all good.

This reunion was unlike any previous event for the Class of 1986.  It was the great equalizer.  For the first time, some of our real heroes are dead.  We’ve lost classmates, too.  Some of us are taking our children to tour college campuses, while others are experiencing the late-blooming joy of new love and a baby.  We’re all over the map in some senses, and yet very connected in others.

A couple of nights before the reunion, I kept hearing dialogue from The Big Chill.  William Hurt’s character Nick is stoned and fighting with his old friends.  The primary source of the fight is repressed emotions about a mutual friend’s suicide.   At one point Nick snaps to Tom Berenger’s character Sam, “You’re wrong.  You don’t know me.  A long time ago we knew each other for a very short period.  It was easy back then.  You don’t know anything about me.  It’s only out here in the real world where things get tough.”

Sam is angry but he tells his friend, “You’re wrong.  I know I loved you and everyone here, and I’m not going to p*** that away because you’re higher than a kite.  I’ll go on believing that until I die.”

This scene has been lodged in my memory since I first saw the film.  It’s the ageless question of how “real” the friendships of very young classmates can actually be, especially when they remain under the glass of a nostalgic past.  I knew how I felt about my old friends, but I was anxious about what our time together would really show.

It didn’t take long to find out.

I noticed a new vibe at this reunion, one that said all bags had been checked before boarding the weekend.  One lovely consequence of getting older is that we are just  too weary to lug around all of the issues we dragged along to the previous reunions.  Half of us have experienced at least one divorce.  Some of us have lost siblings or children to illness or accident.  Many of us have deceased parents.  We’ve had career crashes, sickness, parenting fails, pounds on and pounds off, and severed relationships with people we once loved.  We all know it now.  No one has missed these experiences entirely, and if they claim they have, well, they are not telling the truth.

This time, we all came to the reunion to tell the truth.

I’m gay.  I’m a single parent.  I’m really sick.  I’m unemployed.  I’ve killed people.  I’ve delivered babies.  I’m afraid everyone will realize I was never a very good friend.  I married someone I didn’t love.  I’ve never been happier or more sure of myself.  I’m worried about my parents.  I’ve turned to God.  I’ve left the church.  I’m an alcoholic.  I fight terrorists.  I fight with my kids.  I finally know what I’m doing.  I have no idea what I’m doing.

My friend posted this on his Facebook page today:  “With the passage of twenty-five years, most of the people with whom I went to high school had turned into vague mythical shadows in the depths of my mind. What a pleasant surprise to find that the people with whom I was friends are still wonderful, and the people I didn’t know well are kind and thoughtful adults. The class of ’86 rules!!!”

Rules indeed.  Now, pass the aspirin and my cane.  I need to rest up for the 30th……you people wore me out.  And I still really love you.

The Big Game – Suited Up at the 40

/ Elizabeth Gaucher / Leave a comment

It takes a while to really get it.  At the proverbial mid-field point myself, I would say I am still trying to live the reality every day, but better late than never.  Here’s how it works:

We think we are born naked, but we’re not really.  We are wearing tiny, invisible, game day uniforms.  Little knee pads, wee helmets, grippy cleats, the whole ensemble.  Over time we start to notice not only are we suited up, we’re on the field.  So is everyone else.

We look around and start trying to identify our team members.  We talk strategy, and possible plays, and rest periods and practice times.  Sometimes we lose teammates, and that hurts.  Sometimes we find out we are playing a position at which we are terrible, but fortunately we have the choice to move around.  Good teammates will let us do that.  Sometimes we get traded, and sometimes we get suspended.  We are injured, sometimes severely.  We win games.  We lose games.  We go into overtime.

Slowly it dawns on us that these things are not happening to us.  We are engaged in most outcomes, and certainly always in our responses to the dynamics of the game.  It’s a relief, and it’s also a humbling and sobering moment of truth.

One of biggest learning  points in The Big Game is that the refs are not ethical arbiters.  Law is only law, and what is legal or technically aligned with the rules of the game most often only coincidentally aligns with what is right.  Learning to know the difference and to respect what that difference requires of us is a demand of the game with no clock running down. 

It is always on.

There is no postponement of The Big Game.  We are all playing it right now, and the sooner the adults involved in the West Virginia AAA State Football tournament debacle wake up to that reality and what we are teaching kids with this ridiculous behavior, the better.  It may be too late, because at the moment the field is littered with nothing but losers as far as the eye can see.

On an up note, one great thing about The Big Game is that there is often a thrilling emergence of an unexpected hero.  My hope is that hero turns out to be the kids themselves.  Time will tell.