Class Reunion
I am wearing a girdle. We are in the truck and I can barely move, each bump of the struts forcing my internal organs to spoon. It’s ridiculous, really, that I would wedge myself into this modern version of that old sadistic contraption, my hip and belly fat now resting uncomfortably near my neck. It’s ridiculous because I see so many of these people, these gentle people, pretty regularly on a day-to-day basis. It’s not like I traveled far beyond my bittersweet sticky hometown in the first place. It’s not like they don’t know what I look like now, how much older, thicker, quieter I’ve gotten. It’s not like Facebook hasn’t made our lives a high school Groundhog’s Day as it is. Still, it’s my 15th reunion and so, this girdle. This awful girdle. Me, and it, at my high school reunion. Thick as thieves.
I walk in cold with sweat. I introduce my husband over and over, even though he’s met them all a hundred times. He was there, after all, in the beginning, whether they remember this or not. He was that faithful payphone ring in the commons, that daily lunch call, that lifeline thrown to this drowning girl whose waters were always choppier than anyone else’s, or so it always seemed to her, me. Some days I close my eyes and I can still smell the sharks.
These people, however, were not the sharks. These people, my former classmates, still make me smile, this small town menagerie of Midwestern kindness. There are a few I wish I’d spent more time with. There are a few I wonder if I really knew at all. There are several I want to snatch and drag out back right now, ask them everything I never realized I wanted, needed, to know. Finally take that smoke.
For a tiny moment between laughs and shifting feet I remember how much I cared. I remember how often I wept, how tightly I clenched, how much I thought I lost. I don’t remember the details, the hard facts, as much as I remember the grief, the angst, the flashes of self-hatred and hurt, the bewilderment. The regret.
The truth is I barely survived high school. I don’t know how many of my classmates realize that, I honestly don’t. I don’t know if their memories are better than mine, if they look at me and see only that hot mess of a kid, that girl who sort of lost it halfway through… or if time has softened their perceptions. They are certainly friendly now, more than fair in their faith, more than I think I deserve. I am grateful.
My freshman year was an awful shock, my sophomore year a blur of rebellion, my junior year a singularly focused mission of escape. My senior year never happened, I’d already gone off to college. (Mission accomplished.) One boy defined that second year for me, in the most awful, awful way. A different boy bolstered that third year. Thank God for that boy in my third year, that boy who stands beside me now, at my reunion. Every five minutes or so I steal a glance and he’s always looking my way. All these years later.
I can’t figure out if I’m a fool or not. I look at each of these faces and there’s not a single one I dislike, not a one I thought ill of then or now—but did they feel the same? Or did they whisper themselves hoarse behind my back? It’s a thought that used to disturb me far more often than it does these days, these days where I just don’t care the way I once did. In fact, the only thing that truly shakes me now is this quiet sense of loss, this active noticing of the places people should be standing, people who no longer are, much the way my watercolor artist mom paints the negative spaces into a glorious whole. The rest is easy, light, all pastel cream tubes of color and liquid and sun. The beer is smooth and cheap, the meats miniature and saucy, the laughs thick and abundant. I rock my best friend’s baby. I inhale his newness. I grin at my lot, my blessed, blessed lot.
Later, much later, our truck in my parents’ driveway, the flex of Dave’s jeans as he climbs the stairs, a sudden smack of dizzy, of disorientation. He disappears inside the house and I stare at that front porch, framed by his windshield, an old movie flickering, and I see him there, I see us, there, the first time his hand dared creep inside my shirt, right there on that swing, I watch it play out. I don’t want to look away. He steps out now, interrupts the film, a sweet solid dad behind his old feverish ghost, our daughters draped across his shoulders. Our girls. When did this happen?
Our oldest is now a fourth grader. She blinks, all heavy sleep and confusion in the backseat. I remember my classmates as fourth graders, me and Joel colliding into concussion at recess, Eliza dumping her retainer in the hot lunch bin, Dusty and his box cars, Miss Suzy and her Steamboat and her glorious curses on the bus. Most of all I remember that I was me, that we were us, and I look at my daughter and I wonder what’s to come. I wonder what will plague her, what she’ll be thankful for, whose salty forearm she’ll study in the midnight glow as it steers her family home, everything she ever cared about, everything that ever really meant something, safe, as long as he’s at the wheel.
Jay Schryer says:
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. You’re a masterful storyteller! I just love the way you write!
September 20th, 2009 at 3:16 pm
witchypoo says:
As always, beauty.
September 20th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
Susan (woo222) says:
Oh wow Maggie. Your writing always leaves me breathless. And you aren’t a fool, and anyone who knows anything knows that even during your rough years you were a diamond in the rough. I love your beautiful little family. You are the coolest!
September 20th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
Ginny says:
This was beautiful. My 20th is coming up (alarmingly quickly), and I’m not sure I need to go; Facebook definitely removes some of the impetus. And now you’ve got me looking at my kids in yet another way.
September 20th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
Liz says:
Your husband is lucky to be so very loved, as lucky as you feel to have him.
September 20th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Monda says:
Beautifully written, gal. I’m staring down my 30th reunion next summer and it looks more like a cosmetic surgery fix than a perfect girdle for most of us. Luckily, by the 25th reunion no one remembers who we were in high school. We begin fresh.
September 20th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
tracey says:
I’m just sighing at the lovely pictures you paint with words…
September 20th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
Ann says:
Beautiful. How much you travel while you stay right where you are.
September 20th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
Breanne says:
Wonderfully written..i love it!
September 20th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
racheld says:
Thank you, Maggie, for this story told as full and round as an apple presented on a palm.
September 20th, 2009 at 6:39 pm
Boy Crazy says:
Oh, Maggie…I love this so much. I love how you love your husband and I can see the way you look at each other in your words here. This is beautiful. I hope he reads it, too. Yesterday was twelve years since my husband first kissed me in his college dorm room, and I just wrote a short and sweet little piece about it myself. So nice to click over here and read your beautiful reflection on the love you two share (among all of the other stories wrapped up in this piece). It warms my heart.
September 20th, 2009 at 6:42 pm
flutter says:
You two are so deserving
September 20th, 2009 at 7:01 pm
jen says:
a man with girls draped over his shoulders … the vision is exquisite and makes me love my husband more. thanks for the reminder. (especially on a night when he called from new york to make sure that i have most of the house stuff done ’cause he has lots he needs to get done when he gets home tomorrow … ok … maybe i’m still a little crabby about it.)
but … really … when did that married with two girls thing happen? it’s hard to remember where you are when you are in the midst of so many past faces.
September 20th, 2009 at 7:02 pm
Camille says:
Lovely piece of writing, as usual. Now I see where the corset came in.
I just went to my ten-year reunion last month—kind of amazing how all the old ties and feelings come rushing back. It was so lovely to be able to relate to each other as adults though—no more BS! (None of the bitchy popular girls showed up.)
September 20th, 2009 at 7:36 pm
Chris says:
Once again, well done. Like a favorite old song, you say what I might never have known that I wanted to say. And you say it beautifully.
September 20th, 2009 at 7:56 pm
anymommy says:
I am supremely glad that I stayed up a few more minutes to read you, Maggie. You never disappoint. I have one of those salty-forearmed (love! it!) guys at the wheel too. I thank my lucky stars for him every day.
September 20th, 2009 at 9:30 pm
Jack says:
I think that quite a few of us felt like outsiders, even those perceived by everyone else to be the queen and king bees.
September 20th, 2009 at 9:31 pm
A Free Man says:
Your high school experience sounds a lot like mine. Especially senior year. I was gone – already at the local community college for most of my classes.
You’re braver than me, though. I’ve got no interest in my re-unions. I happily missed out my 20th this year and I can’t think of any circumstances that would bring me back in the future!
Hope you and your girdle went OK!
September 20th, 2009 at 9:45 pm
starrlife says:
Wonderful post- bringing me back, for me 30 years now- yikes! It’s funny how time both softens and intensifies at the same time.
September 21st, 2009 at 3:47 am
Nicolasa says:
Love it. So many people are having their class reunions lately and I bet they feel the same exact way you just described.
September 21st, 2009 at 3:53 am
Mojo,NC,USA says:
High school.
Can I just not think about it? (Please!)
Though if I could weave the tapestry from those threads of memory that you have, perhaps I wouldn’t mind so much.
The beauty in this post is the love. Pure, distilled, undiluted. It drips from every word, clinging there like rich wild honey, unspoiled by modern processes that try to make it into a uniformly defined product packaged and sold in your grocer’s spice aisle (or wherever they put that stuff). Not the homogenized, branded variety (fortified with vitamins and minerals!) but the raw, untamed kind from the hive in the black walnut tree down the block. I never made it past the bees. But I’m just stupid happy that you did.
I went to my 10th reunion back when you were still in pigtails and reading Sally, Dick and Jane (do they still read those?) and realized that I recognized all these people, but never knew them. So I let my 15th slide on by. And my 20th. And now they don’t even bother informing me anymore. I suppose my 30th was sometime last year (would’ve been the right year anyway) but I never heard about it. (I wonder if I should be offended? I’m not… is that wrong? Abnormal?)
Damn sis, you can even make high school sound appealing. You are truly, truly gifted.
September 21st, 2009 at 6:43 am
Postmarc says:
I agree with Tracey–you paint with words better than anyone I know. At OFD, the rollercoaster of emotion we latch onto is sometimes slow and uphill, then other times takes us through swift and unexpected turns then slows again, all in a paragraph or two, before repeating.
When it is over, we yearn for more.
Just beautiful…
Glad you got your boy.
September 21st, 2009 at 9:10 am
Nicole says:
So envy that love. Do you know how ahead of the statistical odds you two are? Takes my breath away. And, like a few other relationships I’ve been lucky enough to cross, feeds my reason to hope.
As for high school … what a mix of triumph, trauma, and tragedy! Sounds like it was that way for both of us.
My 20th and 25th reunions came and went without me present. (I stopped torturing myself sometime after my 15th. Oh. And my closest friends, the bulk of the people I’d ever hope to care about post-high school, we had our own “anti-reunion” for the 20th.) While there are a dozen or so people I wonder about, the bulk of the people that would even matter, I already know about because I see and/or hear from them regularly!
September 21st, 2009 at 9:43 am
Issa says:
I married my high school sweetheart and I still don’t think I’d go back for a reunion.
Beautiful post Maggie.
September 21st, 2009 at 10:06 am
JD at I Do Things says:
What a lovely post (as usual). I didn’t go to my reunion because high school was such hell for me. But I had one of those “third-year boys,” too, who pulled me out of my hell and helped me turn around. I didn’t marry him, but I’ll always think fondly of him.
September 21st, 2009 at 10:42 am
Jewels says:
I love to read. I thought that I had so many favorite books that when asked it is hard to conjure up an answer. However, the other week when asked…I just replied, “Oh, it is not actually a book…it is blog dammit.” So thankful that I came across your blog months ago during such a hard time. You inspire me and your words make hearts smile. What a beautiful entry…as always.
September 21st, 2009 at 11:36 am
Gwen says:
Maggie, Maggie, Maggie. You and your gifts.
September 21st, 2009 at 1:01 pm
blues says:
Oh please Maggie. Please don’t ever stop telling me your stories.
September 21st, 2009 at 1:27 pm
Lauren says:
LOVES IT!
September 21st, 2009 at 5:42 pm
liv says:
it’s like that: the requests for “friendship” on facebook now. the emails i send to my old hs bff asking her who on earth these people are. i have deep, selective amnesia about those high school years. i realize i didn’t know those people anymore than i knew myself back then.
September 21st, 2009 at 5:53 pm
Neil says:
I hope every one of your former classmates reads this, so they see what you really have made of yourself fifteen years later — a writer and mother and wife and friend with a generous soul. But then again, you were probably not that different back then.
September 21st, 2009 at 6:13 pm
Nina says:
When he was in high school my husband was in a heavy metal band called Orion. He had a Misguided Goattee, death-to-the-liver socialising habit and a fondness for riding motorcycles without protective gear. He doesn’t let me play any of Orion’s songs for probably the same reason that I don’t let him read my teenage poetry.
When I was in high school I wore a succession of shapeless and terrible clothes (perhaps only exceeded by my terrible haircuts) and spent a lot of time thinking about superheroes, death, superficial skinny bitches and whether I would ever find someone to love me even though I was (oh horror!) fat. I would wear dark bras underneath light shirts and think I was all edgy and fashion forward.
I am so so so so glad that he and I did not know each other then, just as I am so glad that you and your husband did.
September 22nd, 2009 at 7:29 am
muskrat says:
I wish I’d had a 15-year reunion. We appear to be waiting on 20 years instead (2013). I like my friends from childhood.
Of course, the only salty forearms I studied belonged to the Hendersonville Police Department as they forced my cluttered head into the back of a squad car yet again. Mean old cops.
September 22nd, 2009 at 10:26 am
Lisa @ Boondock Ramblings says:
I didn’t go to my 10th. I don’t know if I’ll go to my 20th. But I love the way you wove your feelings from your own and how it opened up my eyes to how long ago that was and how wonderful I have it now with my husband and our son.
September 22nd, 2009 at 10:32 am
Heather of the EO says:
I’m a little astounded because you just put my heart into words. The same feelings I had at my fifteenth. Wow, I still love those people and hurt over my losses and the loss of those who are gone.
And the regret, the shaping of me, and the now…
See? – http://theextraordinaryordinary.blogspot.com/2009/09/rewriting-my-name.html
I honestly don’t normally pimp out my posts in the comments, but I just really had to share that one with you after reading this.
Thank you.
September 22nd, 2009 at 12:06 pm
Erika says:
Damn. Just — damn.
September 22nd, 2009 at 4:32 pm
Undomestic Diva says:
I don’t know how you’ve gotten to where you’re at having been through where you’ve gone, but wow. Just wow. You are so humble and graceful and such a beautiful human being. Truly.
September 22nd, 2009 at 7:19 pm
Working Mom @ bigjobsboard says:
Wow! Amazing Story! It is so real. I can relate. I guess life is all about changing. And I am just lucky to have a loving husband. He does not care how I look now than I was 18 years old. I just hope this will be forever.
September 23rd, 2009 at 4:49 am
Anita Tedaldi says:
What a great way to tell this story! My twentieth reunion will be in 3 years back in Italy I hope I can go and if I do the emotions would probably be like yours –
Thank you for sharing
Anita
September 23rd, 2009 at 6:26 am
just beth says:
What a gorgeous love letter.
xo
b.
September 23rd, 2009 at 8:33 am
Fran says:
Wow! Beautiful as always. 27 years ago I graduated with 1300 other seniors from a mega-school. I’ve never been to a reunion. Never given much consideration for what I missed. Until now.
Fortunately, in your telling, you’ve filled a void just as I became aware of it.
September 23rd, 2009 at 4:26 pm
kanishk says:
I’m just sighing at the lovely pictures you paint with words…
How to make a website
September 24th, 2009 at 9:03 pm
Prefers Her Fantasy Life says:
He’s always looking my way–what a simple wonderful thing to say about a spouse. I’m soooo jealous.
September 25th, 2009 at 7:36 am
Amysprite says:
I’d really like to make it home for a class reunion some day, but I feel like I’m never going to get closer than Facebook to all those people from back then. How horrible to have to celebrate the most traumatic years of one’s life, anyway. The intensity of feelings at that age are definitely a double-edged sword.
September 25th, 2009 at 4:37 pm
Captain Steve says:
I’ve never felt the need to go to a class reunion. The awkward small talk with people i didn’t talk to back then, the pitying glances, “oh, you still live near here?” No emotional pull at all. I’m glad you enjoyed yours, though.
September 27th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
Eliza says:
I’m loving me some girdle for sure!
September 28th, 2009 at 7:40 am
warmchocmilk says:
I’ve heard about you many times from my neighbor Heather or the E.O. and also from Ann and Ann’s Rants..I finally got over here to pay you a visit. I can see why you are often mentioned……great blog, great writing style. I’ll be back
September 28th, 2009 at 9:48 am
arizaphale says:
I loved your description of seeing yourself on the porch and then Dave busting through the old movie. I think that was the thing that Himself did for me, he provided a link between the girl I was here in my hometown and the woman I have become after all those years away. Sometimes I look at myself in the mirror and have to pull in the picture from my head and try and lay it over the top of what stares at me now.
Love reunions.
September 29th, 2009 at 7:32 pm
Jeanne says:
Visiting from Vodka Mom’s….
What a wonderful writer you are!
September 30th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
Nora says:
You are a lovely story teller. Salty forearms!
October 1st, 2009 at 12:30 pm
Adventures In Babywearing says:
Maggie, I am a bit behind on reading, but this is incredible. Next year will be 15 yrs for me and I could have been you in this story. I wonder how many of us felt the exact same thing, but never realized it about the other.
Steph
October 3rd, 2009 at 3:53 am
Aubrey says:
*sniff*
aw..
October 3rd, 2009 at 4:50 am
Jessica says:
You have an award waiting for you on my blog
October 4th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
Jurgen Nation says:
I just read your comment on Neil’s post. You made me smile. Thank you for not forgetting me. A smiley emoticon doesn’t do justice to the blushing smile on my face now, just knowing that at least one person (and an awesome one at that) remembered me. xo!
October 5th, 2009 at 7:56 pm
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October 6th, 2009 at 10:23 pm
Cathy says:
Oh, Maggie – why can you always see inside my heart and write it out? Sometimes I think we’ve lived, in many ways, parallel emotional lives. You put into words the pain I lived in high school, and show how un-real it was but how real it was at the time, and you take all I feel about my “lot” now and write it down for me to see in such a beautiful way. And all the while, it’s not even really about me, it’s about you. Speaking of girls who obsess much, oy. Anyway, thanks for your words. You bless me. Don’t dispute it, you do.
October 13th, 2009 at 8:54 am