It seems that anybody that writes a blog or a memoir or a thought-piece writes on his or her high school reunion.  I never understood why until I went to my own reunion.  These events are rich with paradoxes and contradictions and tension that must be worked out.  For the writer, clarity comes at the end of pencil tips.  Writing is the place to reconcile the cognitive dissonance between what was and what is and between the promise of 18 year-old potential and the realities of middle-age.  It was all so confusing.  

These events, like all events, start with the invitation, not the name tags.  The invite starts the questions and the internal narratives.  I wondered about my expectations. What did I hope for? What was I afraid of?  I quite literally hadn’t seen most of my peers since our graduation ceremony.  My memories were mixed.  I was a different person and so were they — or at least most of them.  We grew up, had babies and got mortgages.  

I was also introducing my wife to my former self.  What stories would they tell about me? What fears and feelings would this conjure in me?  What would she think of my first girlfriend?  What would I think of my first girlfriend?  Her baseline understanding of my awkwardness was established and this event had the potential to push that even further back.  

I was nervous.  

But why?  Objectively, I am happily married, have great kids, a good job, and am where I want to be.  Why was this event threatening that?  What’s more, I excelled in most areas of high school life: academics, athletics, student leadership, social life. There were no grand traumas.  But fear is rarely objective.  

And still...I was nervous.  Stepping back in time to revisit an earlier version of myself is unnerving.  

…so I  held my wife by the hand as we walked back in time. She walked with me to meet a different version of me.  She didn’t have to.  She took at vow to love me from that day forward, not that day backward. But I’m glad she did.  I’m glad she is committed to the man I am, honoring the boy that brought me to her.   I had nothing to hide from her.  And yet there were people and stories I didn’t remember and some I didn’t want to.  I prepped my bride with potential landmines and folks I really wanted her to meet.  I later learned that my mother had given her the same briefing.  

Some knew me immediately and others looked intently past the grey, searching for an earlier version of the face before them, much like that kid grabbing at Robin Williams’ face in Hook as if to say ’there you are.’  Most folks were kind as we swapped stories about what’s happened since age 18, mutually embarrassed at how little we knew of one another.  We used our spouses as a conversational bridge, swapping pleasantries in the form of introductions.  We searched for appropriate stories of shared antics and capers.  Some introductions required deeper digging while others needed more filtering.  

The awkwardness of teenage years had been replaced by the awkwardness of knowing too much and not enough about one another at the same time.  And still, we shared a rite of passage together.  There is something special about the people with whom you do life; people with whom you don’t get to choose relationship.  Our parents put us at that school and our teachers picked our schedules.  We saw one another in good moments and bad as we found (and pushed) all of the boundaries.  And we did it all together.  

As the evening continued, the edginess wore off (or perhaps the red wine kicked in).  We found the misfits and the naysayers.  Fortunately, those that were still angry simply didn’t come, which left those that genuinely wanted to be there.  We found those I’d wronged and those I’d served and we even found the ex-girlfriend.   Thankfully, we’d both grown.  She was not the person she was at eighteen and neither was I.  We fumbled through niceties, asking about our respective parents and siblings.  As we danced around the highest level questions, I felt my bride reach up and hold my elbow, anchoring me to the man I am today and the life I chose and reminding me that she was with me in it, all with the subtle brush of her arm.  

We walked away from my past pain and found someone that would resupply the energy I’d just spent.  We stopped by the yearbook table and scanned photos dug from the archives.  We talked at one another while others introduced their spouses to the same pictures.  Like high school, as long as we were talking at something, we didn’t have to talk to someone.  So we talked about the physical school building and how much it had changed since we left.  One guy shared with his wife that they’d paved over the tree where he used to eat lunch by himself while another shared that the hallway where fights would occur is now a STEM lab.  

Memories are the stories we tell ourselves and reunions are where those stories are tested, shared, buried and resurrected.  

I’m grateful.  

I‘m grateful that I’m not the boy I was at eighteen.  

I’m grateful that I married the right one not the first one.  

I’m grateful that she’s for the boy I was, stands with the man I am and hopes for the man I am becoming.

I’m grateful that I grew up, left town, went to the State school and tested the things I was taught in those classrooms.  

I’m grateful to have experienced a bigger story and that my reunion was an excuse for a date night rather than an event against which my year had been anchored.

I’m grateful.