Stay of Execution

A Different College Reunion Experience

Opinionistas didn't enjoy her college reunion as much as I did.  I wonder if we were at the same one?  (We didn't have a cover band, under our tent, but much of the rest of the description fit.)  In any case, someone with the radar tuned in to only the most shallow conversations under the tent wouldn't challenge her description.  I won't, either.  There were some of Ralph-Lauren-clad toddlers and ruler-thin women out to settle old scores.  There was some self-satisfaction that was pretty hard to take.  But there were also a lot of quirky, friendly people, capable of interesting conversation beyond Manhattan brand-names and resume highlights. 

Bright College Years

I'm not done processing my college reunion this past weekend.  Although I came back from reunion full of nostalgia and a bit of regret, it's important to say that I didn't have a great college experience. 

There were some things that were great.  The exploring and the sense of a world containing secrets that I could discover, that was great.  The people I got to know, and the sense of talent and abundance and possibility everywhere, that was great.  My secret society (shhh!), and what I learned through it about trusting and connecting with people who are very different from me, was great.  The sailing team, and my chance to focus and approach a kind of mastery, was great. 

And yet my experience was full of self-doubt and isolation. 

Why Are Reunions So Scary?

I've gotten some nice feedback from folks who say that what I've written about my reunion makes them less worried about their own.   It made me think about that low-grade dread I had before this one, alongside the excitement and anticipation.  How come reunions make us anxious?   

I have a hypothesis about this, but it's not fully formed yet.  I think it's related to shame, which I have been thinking about recently.  I think both shame and reunion-dread come from a sense of a discrepancy between our own potential and what we have actually done.  A sense of what we could be (and imagine we "should" be) and what we are, and of the gulf between them.   If we were better somehow, we'd be more like what we should and could be, and less like we are.   

Maybe when I get it more fully figured out I'll write something more profound.  The thing that makes shame go away, as far as I've figured out, is sunlight: not hiding the way you actually are, not cowering in the face of your own imagined better self, or the presumed expectations of others. Reunions can act as that sunlight.  You show up imagining that your peers have all reached their own potential and know yours, and will judge you for what you have not become.  But what you find is that they love what you are, and they're interested in what you have become, and that your real self, bumping along the paths you've chosen and shrugging and turning around when you hit a blind alley, is as loveable and interesting as any aspirational person you could have become. 

Try The Door

Yale is an old place, founded in 1701 and added to, with whimsy and flourish and intention, ever after. Buildings contain courtyards and balconies and passageways and fireplaces and gardens. The buildings and their uses have changed again and again: interior courtyards and gardens have been abandoned or filled, classrooms have become dorms, new buildings spring up and old ones crumble for a while, then are put to new uses.  The old buildings and the new ones are connected by a series of subterranean steam tunnels: hot, dark, dusty places, some wide and high and clear enough to ride a motorcycle through, and others just crawlspaces on earthen floors with crumbling brick walls.

When I was a sophomore I stumbled on a mysterious adventure that took me into the steam tunnels. Someone, an unknown group, had left a cryptic poster clue promising a hidden treasure.

Unsorted College Reunion Bits

• There is such a thing as a "warm acquaintanceship."  I didn't know this at my 5th year reunion.  I thought that if I genuinely liked and respected someone, one or both of us should feel guilty that we hadn't been in touch, and we should apologize and make amends and resolve to be active and friendly participants in one another's lives.  I don't feel that way anymore.  There are people I think are great, and am delighted to know, and can have meaningful and challenging conversations with, and wish all kinds of good things upon, and feel easily myself with, and know I won't lift a finger to see again.  That's okay.  If our paths cross or circumstances conspire to bring us together, wonderful.  If not, it's nobody's fault.  I hope to see them again in 5 more years.  No need to promise or demand more.

Why You Should Go To Your College Reunion

1) You forge new relationships with people from your school.   You will discover that the range and kinds of relationships you can have in your life are broader now than they were when you were in college.  You will meet people you never knew then, you will be able to talk to people who intimidated you then, you will remember people you liked but lost touch with.  You will see the manifestations of so many different kinds of talent and potential, applied in all different directions.  You and your classmates are connected, even if you never met while you were in school, and there is a kind of access and discourse and even trust possible with these people that isn't quite like what you have with anyone else in your life.  These people, and the relationship you have with them, is what I was thinking about when I wrote Why Go To An Ivy League School.

2) You will forge a new relationship with yourself.  You will experience sudden memories, evoked by people and places and smells, or just the shadow of an oak on a slate walkway in a particular low slanting light, and these felt memories will be a mirror on your own past.  You will understand who you were then, and who you are now, in a fundamentally different way.  You are the same person who was here so long ago, and yet you have changed and grown and can hardly believe you were ever so young.  You will discover that you were in the Sistine Chapel and you didn't know enough to look up.  You will discover that the myth you've been telling yourself about your college experience is not nuanced or accurate, or very useful.  You will realize how much you absorbed and learned while you were here, and how much you weren't able to see and comprehend, and you will realize how different your filters have become in the intervening years.  I think you will feel relief, and gratitude, for how far you have come.

3) You will forge a new relationship with your school.  You will realize that things you blamed on it were not its fault, were not inevitable, were accidents of the filter you carried and the individual path you stumbled onto when you were too young to know better.  You will realize that things you have blamed on yourself were not your own fault, but were failures of the school or the department, oversights of preoccupied scholars who did not see you falling through the cracks.  You will realize that your school is always your school, that you have not wasted your chance to know it.  You will realize that in some way you are always welcome there, if you choose to go back. 

Rapturous

Having an amazing time at reunion.  College is squandered on the young.  Lots of thoughts, feelings, impressions.  Busy having them, so can't write about them.  I'm so glad they let us come back.  This place is such a treasure. 

What I've Got Going For Me

• I have my health, which I now appreciate.
• I live with the world's best dog.
• I live with a dear friend, in a house that I own (well, me and the bank).  I have a big yard and a garage full of surfboards and cross country skis and bikes and wetsuits and a grill.  The roses and the peonies will be blooming shortly.  My house is a drop-by place, where people pop in to visit and stay for dinner.  There is lots of lending and borrowing and potlucking and sleepovers.
• I have a warm and full social life, with interesting friends who are generous with their time and their laughter.  I still see people I knew in elementary school, and I'm still making new friends, and when people come to my house they open up to me and to one another and the result is happy times. 
• I am close to my mom and dad, who I admire and enjoy, and see them often. 
• I have a law degree, and I've learned some law, and I've gotten to know a lot of smart and interesting lawyers.
• I have a sailboat, sitting on my grandfather's mooring, and an all-girl Hooked On Tonics sailing team who I love to race with.
• I am trying to do something I've always wanted to do, even though it's scary.
• I'm smitten with a sweet man who knows a lot about boats and a lot about words and sees the beauty in the world.
• I am on the board of the Portland Yacht Club, a place that has mattered to me my whole life, and I love feeling like I'm helping take care of the place. 
• I feel very connected to my community. 
• I have a blog. 

I'm feeling better about this reunion already.

New Haven Bound

Heading south for my 10 year reunion today.  Hoping to find a place along the way to pick up an inflatable husband.  I'll tell everyone his name is Fernando and that he doesn't speak any English. 

Wish me luck. 

Tenth Reunion

I was going through my mail pile and finally decided to open the thick packet with the details about my upcoming Yale 10th reunion.  I began mentally making my to-do list to get ready for the event.

To do before June 2-3:

1) Lose 15 lbs
2) Win major professional, literary, or intellectual award
3) Attract and marry glamorous husband, preferably with foreign accent
4) Pop out a couple of precious and handsome children.  Learn how to care for them, graciously and effortlessly.
5) Develop a singing, acting, or athletic ability and form a nationally-recognized organization around it, as a "little hobby" 
6) Do some international humanitarian aid work
7) Study up on politics, economics, pop culture, literature, linguistics, etc.
8) Get featured on National Public Radio
9) Produce an independent film
10) Take a company public, then travel the world for a year or so afterwards around India and Asia, connecting deeply with own spirituality
11) Get PhD
12) Work in an inner city school
13) Hold elected office

Can't wait to see all my classmates in New Haven!  We'll have so much to talk about!