Should old acquaintance be forgot...

Yes, that's me in the upper-right corner, in 1965.

Growing older has its advantages, like senior coffee at McDonald’s and senior discounts at various stores. (For some reason, our “Senior Center Thrift Store” doesn’t have senior discounts. Hmm.) This year I reached another “senior event” about which I had mixed feelings: my fiftieth high school reunion. In 1965 I was among 460 teenagers graduating from Puyallup High School on the west side of Washington state.

 I gave my high school years my best effort, graduating in the top twelve academically. The class “brain,” no surprise, got a doctorate from Yale. (Two B’s in physical education kept me from a 4.0.  I married a physical education teacher. Go figure.) A decade after high school, the many friends who penned in my annual that they’d remember me forever had shrunk to two who sent Christmas greetings for a few years. In those decades before social media, if you didn’t write, call, or get together, friendships tended to fizzle, especially if you moved away from the core community of graduates.   

When the invitation came, I debated over spending $100 a couple for the event at a local casino (presuming drinks and dancing were part of the plan). The strongest drinks in our house are Pepsi or morning-blend coffee. I’ve only done “happy dancing” when I got a book contract in the mail.  My “gambling” is taking a risk on pull-date yogurt from the local discount grocery.  Plus, the reunion was scheduled for our wedding anniversary, and a three-hour drive away. I decided to stay home.

The organizers were doing a “reunion annual” and invited class members to submit a “bio” telling what they had done since high school. Not surprisingly, the student body president became a doctor and the football star spent his life in construction. Many wrote of buying big boats and RVs for retirement. Some had seen the world in military service. One taught in Japan for 26 years. Another spent more than forty years in public relations and lobbying across the nation in Washington, D.C.

 A classmate I didn’t remember earned a doctorate in gerontology and conducted 2,000 workshops in places like Thailand, China, Northern Marianas, Guam and Canada. Oh yes, she also volunteered in Mongolia, trekked with gorillas in Rwanda, and horse-camped in Turkey. Another classmate, to her doctor’s amazement, survived brain cancer.  But the last page held names of 67 members who’d passed away—15% of the class. Some guys may have lost their lives in the Vietnam War. Even 50 years later, without going to our original annual, I could recall their faces

Our daily treks through the wood-floored halls of an old school had united us. But our life choices had separated us.  So had our spiritual choices. I considered going to the reunion for the opportunity to tell what Christ had done for me. But the celebration venue didn’t really lend itself to that. Instead, in my “reunion annual bio” I mentioned that a certain Bible verse had been my life guide.

I know of people who used alumni connections to the glory of God. One from my husband’s high school class went away to West Point and a distinguished military career. But upon retiring to his hometown, he contacted fellow alumni and invited them to participate in a monthly E-mailed prayer request list.

The “golden class reunion” did take me one place, to Psalm 90, attributed to Moses. Two verses especially seemed appropriate for perspective on milestones:

Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom (v. 12)
May the favor of the Lord our God rest upon us; establish the work of our hands for us—yes, establish the work of our hands. (v. 17)

No social event can compete with what’s ahead for those who have trusted Christ. The heavenly “graduation” will surpass it all!

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.