Reunion ruminations

The notice just came for my 45th high school reunion. Oh, dear. Pass the Geritol.

I haven’t made it to a reunion yet, and no longer hear from former classmates. When you move away from the home turf, those friendships slide quickly.

My husband’s 40th reunion came around a few years ago and he signed us up for its evening cruise on Lake Chelan. The “get acquainted time” began with typical questions. Close to retiring yet? (Yes). Kids? (Yes.) Grandkids? (No.) We sipped our pop slowly as his classmates filled with alcohol, loosening their tongues and inhibitions. I was ready to leave in an hour, but the only way “off” would have been to jump overboard. Not in chilly Lake Chelan!

Finally, cruise over, we hurried off, hoping to drive home ahead of those who drank and should not have been behind a wheel. We were nearly killed by a drinking driver in 1997, and you never forget that.

Will I attend my class’s 45th? I’m undecided. Part of me wants to show up and say, “See, I turned out okay. It took a few years.”

After getting the reunion invitation, I took a memory trip through my old high school annual. A lot of kids signed with comments about my bad jokes. Was I that obnoxious? I guess I punned a lot to downplay being one of the class’s scholars. Two B’s on my record (from physical education) marred my otherwise straight-A record. Being concertmistress (first chair) of the high school orchestra was my other honor.

But I didn’t fit in with the typical high school social life. I never had a boyfriend and never went to a school dance. My closest friendships were girls in “Horizon Club,” the teen version of Camp Fire.

As I turned the pages of my high school annual, I noticed an autograph I’d forgotten about. A friend named Bev, whom I remember as a kind person, had thanked me for my work on the Horizon Club scrapbook. Under her name she had put “Galatians 2:20.”

A few years later, I would claim the same text as my “life verse” when I determined that Jesus Christ would define my life’s purpose. “I have been crucified with Christ,” it begins—not a pretty image, but one that defines a significant spiritual decision.

I’ve lived 70% of my life since high school, and I have changed a lot. I had the privilege of mission service, graduate studies, and jobs in publications. I found God to be the God of all comfort when my parents died six months apart when I was 31 and still single.

At 34 I married a 36-year-old teacher, also never married before. We lived simply; I became a coupon-clipper and thrift store visitor. But we paid off our small house and our children made it through college debt-free.

The shy teen who sweated oral class reports now speaks to women’s meetings and retreats. The rookie newspaper reporter who pounded out obituaries moved on to the privilege of writing Christian books.

Our class motto was: “For the best is what we strive, we’re the class of ’65.” Forty-five years later, part of that still makes sense. My “striving for the best” grows out of the last part of Galatians 2:20: “The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.”

If I do turn up at the reunion, that’s what I’d want my classmates to know. I’m not the skinny, nerdy violinist they once knew, but a woman seasoned by life’s hard places and grounded by faith. And, alas, no longer stick-thin.