Senn High School, Class of '55 Reunion
Classmates with confirmed contact information
College reunion rekindles a self that is ageless
by Mary Schmich
Reprinted with the permission of the Chicago Tribune; Copyright © Chicago Tribune; all rights reserved. This article appeared in the Chicago Tribune on May 4, 2005.
"We don't look as old as they do, do we?" muttered my old college friend. It was reunion weekend and we were walking toward a group of alumni gathered on a lawn.
"Let's hope not," I muttered back, squinting at the class year scribbled on their name tags. "They're 20 years older than we are."
This is the kind of conversation heard all across America in the spring, the nation's official reunion season, a time when former classmates return to the alma mater seeking to answer life's deepest questions: How old do I look? How old do they look? We're not really this old, are we?
At first glance, the answers are not pretty.
Well, that guy's eaten a few too many Oreos since he left the dining hall. And who would have thought that dude would have turned white-haired so soon? At least he still has hair.
And her--she wasn't blond in college, was she? But I swear that dingy-haired woman behind her once had locks as gold as summer. And her--she obviously hasn't had her eyes done.
And check out that freak, the one who hasn't gained a line or an ounce in all these years. Revoke her class credentials.
For every assessment you make or hear, of course, you know an equally dispassionate analysis is being made of you.
It doesn't matter that you just had a manicure or a haircut or an antioxidant-and-avocado-detox-anti-aging facial. Someone is still whispering to someone else that you could use a double shot of Botox or some tooth bleach or at least a long vacation.
You suspect that "You look great!" is code for, "Hey, I thought you'd look worse!"
You thank God for low lights, name tags and the open bar.
But something funny happens after the shock of the initial reunion sightings and assessments. Once you match your youthful classmates with these middle-age relations, once you get used to the fact that time has robbed every single one of you of something--or added it in the wrong places--you stop noticing the thinning hair and padded waists, the doubled chins and rutted foreheads.
What you notice is the voice. The eyes. The hand gestures and the laugh. They're eerily unchanged. And though it's not visible to the current college kids who drift past thinking, "Geezers," before long, among yourselves, the younger selves are shining through.
You stop thinking about looks, start talking about life.
You trade resumes. Doctor, lawyer, rancher. Teacher, preacher, mom or dad.
Then the talk goes deeper. There's mention of a divorce. A disabled child. A disease conquered or in progress.
Someone says something like, "My male friends warned me about getting involved with a younger woman," and explains that after raising kids with her husband she's raising another with her female partner.
You share stories of the deaths of parents. Of distant travels and surviving dreams. You see someone you were once in love with and you remember why you were, and why it's better for you both that it didn't last. You see someone you might have fallen in love with and wonder if it's better that you didn't.
You eat some more.
And you stop hearing the question that nagged before you came, "Why would I go to a reunion?" You know why now. It's not mostly to revisit memories. It's to share trip notes with your fellow travelers through time. It's to allow your fully alive but often hidden younger self back out on parade. That self can never be fully seen by people who know your past only through your stories.
We often measure our lives in events--the accumulation of things we do and things that happen to us. Reunions remind us that though events may polish us, dent us, turn us upside down or dress us up in different clothes, we are in some basic measure simply who we are. We still are who we were.
So when some reunion shutterbug says, "Smile," you do, with pleasure. And even though later when you see the pictures you'll see that, yeah, you all do look older, you'll also notice something really funny--those smiles have hardly changed at all.