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Illustration by Marley Allen-Ash
I attended my 40-year high-school reunion recently. I had no intention of going until my oldest friend said, “C’mon, let’s go. Even if we don’t have fun, we can say we did it.” (She’s a psychiatrist and she is always trying to push me out of my comfort zone.)
I had never had any desire to go to a reunion before, but this year felt different. We were the class of 1984, graduating high school before personal computers or cellphones, before the internet and social media. Our school still had a smoking area, something my children cannot believe.
We were all born in 1965, either the last year of the baby boom, or the first year of Generation X, which meant we were not really part of either group. There weren’t many of us, and we went through school with many empty classrooms, as the boomers who came before us had filled them, then the universities and, finally, the job market.
I had no idea where most of my peers had ended up and I was curious. Would the mean girls still be mean? Would the cool guys still be cool? And how different was I from the young woman who could not have imagined where the years would take her? I worried about how I would present myself: would I be the only widow at 59?
When the day came, I almost backed out, but when evening came, we went.
I forgot that many of the people I went to high school with also attended my junior high and even my elementary school. I can’t remember what I ate for lunch yesterday, but seeing their faces, instantly brought back memories of walking my younger brother to school when I was 7 and he was 5, playing four-square and hopscotch, and taking out library books (my favourite school activity). I may not have remembered all their names, but their faces looked a lot like mine, shaped by life experiences over 40 years, some much more difficult than mine. I may have lost my husband at a young age, and been let go from a long-time job, but others had lost children, lost parents to a series of horrendous diseases and still others had died in their 20s or 30s.
I saw middle-aged men and women who at heart were just older versions of their teenage selves. We may now be grown-up professionals, but you never really lose that core of who you are at 19.
The men had less hair and the women universally looked better than we had when we were younger. The female beauty I saw around me came from within, a sense of fulfilment in our lives which were sometimes quite difficult but never boring, and in our comfort with ourselves.
If I could have somehow gone back to tell my high-school self, “Don’t worry, you will be fine. It gets better, and sometimes worse, but you will keep going,” maybe I would have spent less time in my life thinking other people had more fun, more sex, more money and focused more on enjoying what was happening in the here and now.
That one evening didn’t change anything, but I left the party feeling like I had accomplished something. I told people I hadn’t seen in decades who I was, the good and the bad, and they didn’t run away. We all had stories to tell, and the most interesting ones were about the directions our lives took that we never expected. We were so much more interesting than the people we had been in 1984, because we were individuals.
In high school I, at least, didn’t want to stand out, be different, and being the best or worst at something made people know who you were. Now, we could confidently talk about our achievements and also divulge the losses and messy parts of our lives. The girl I was in high school would have died before revealing her true self; the woman who attended her 40-year high-school reunion could show up, as she was, and be accepted. So, I am glad I went. Warts and all.
Mira Pilch lives in Toronto.