Reunion Gratitude and Growing Up: A Reflection

Thomas Wolfe wrote that you can’t go home again. That is a good thing. Recently, I gathered with many of my college theatre classmates. I didn’t go to the university events. I didn’t go to a football game or tailgate or anything like that. I went to a small party at a classmate’s home as I have done every five or so years. There were about thirty or forty theatre alumni there. It was better than going back to our college home, thirty-five years ago. 

I chaired two of my high school reunions. I like reunions. Yet, there is something very special and different about this particular reunion and these people. We competed with each other in college. We may have continued that at our early reunions, but I don’t remember that. 

What I do know is, for me, that need to compete is gone. I look at my classmates and marvel and celebrate their outstanding work, spaning theatre and many other fields. I delight in their company in a way I did not in college. I appreciate them like I never could have imagined when we were in school years ago. Some of the folks who came were people with whom I spent a great deal of time. Some I knew in passing, and now I wish I had spent more time with them. 

Like my other reunions, some of my closest friends were unable to attend. None of the people present were at my wedding or my children’s mitzvahs. In other reunions, that might have been awkward or disappointing. That was not the case at all; it was an ideal chance to catch up, renew relationships, and celebrate.

I feel so grateful and fortunate to have second and third and fourth chances to meet these people. I am so grateful to the committee that worked hard to preserve our bond. Their work has allowed me to see so much more than a “reunion” version of our college selves. Each time we gather, I get a better glimpse of the more complex and real people we have become. 

At nineteen and twenty, I couldn’t get past myself. I was stuck and confused and struggling. I still am, but in my fifties the challenges are different. I am enjoying the confusion, choosing the struggle, and working hard to get out of myself and out of my own (and others) way. That was not true thirty-five years ago. Now, I have an opportunity to go beyond my college inadequacies, to present myself as I am now. To laugh at and, yes, even apologize for the sins of my college past. 

We hear about coming to terms with the past. We talk about forgiveness and putting the past in its place. At my reunion, I got to complement the past. I got to reconnect with my classmates, some of whom I have gotten to know far better in the years since college. And I appreciate them more each time I see them. 

This reunion made me long to see these folks again. I see many on Facebook and that whets my appetite. It enables me to see my classmates more fully and feel at least a little connected.

Everyone was not present. There were many people who were missed, talked about, or joined us via video call. While many of us have attended many of these reunions, it is wonderful when faraway faces are able to join us. When they are not, they are sincerely missed. These evenings are punctuated with the question, “What is happening with…?” 

I was not in love with everyone from my theatre program in college. However, that is meaningless now. Our relationship is now about a past we are rewriting, revising, revisiting, and renewing. 

College was never this good. Now it is.