Author Thomas Wolfe once wrote you can never go home again. Mostly I believe that.
When I returned to the South Bay after 15 years in the Midwest, the home place of my memory was, indeed, gone. The open fields in Gardena where we kids rode our bikes had been paved over as strip malls and parking spaces.
Author Thomas Wolfe once wrote you can never go home again. Mostly I believe that.
When I returned to the South Bay after 15 years in the Midwest, the home place of my memory was, indeed, gone. The open fields in Gardena where we kids rode our bikes had been paved over as strip malls and parking spaces.
I think Wolfe’s sentiment applies to people, too. Friends from bygone days grow and change as they trod different paths; oftentimes getting together after a long separation emphasizes the differences between you now and not the similarities you shared back then.
I considered this while deliberating attendance at my 40th high school reunion.
At one time my classmates and I had so much in common. Most of us were Catholic suburbanites whose parents scraped together tuition for the Jesuit-run, all-boys school in Detroit. All of us were academic achievers, all the better to survive the scholastic rigors suffered at the hands of our teachers — priests, men studying to be priests, and laypeople.
For four very formative years of our lives, we sweated together through quizzes and exams, pickup games of handball and basketball, school dances, and extracurricular activities.
But four decades is a very long time. I think I last attended the 25th reunion, when we were all wound up in furthering careers and raising families. Fifteen years will have passed since I saw some of these fellows.
For the 40th then, I wondered what our conversations would be about. Empty nesting? Career changes? Spousal changes? Grandchildren? Retirement plans?
I gloomily predicted not having much to say and planned my itinerary carefully. Couldn’t take the chance of arriving so early at the pre-dinner cocktail hour that I’d run out of topics for social discwourse. The gloom was further enhanced the day of the event with the discovery none of the decent clothing I considered wearing seemed to fit all that well.
Still, I wasn’t going to let my insecurities keep me at home, especially since the school already had my check for the evening’s registration fee.
Fact is, I had a blast. The guys I chatted with weren’t necessarily my closest school chums back in the day, but we did have a fair amount of shared history. Besides our four years in school, we entered college and started jobs and families at about the same time.
What’s more, everyone seemed tickled that we were still alive. It was actually kind of fun hanging out with people I met 44 years ago.
And when the reunion was over, I found I regretted not having a chance to catch up with a host of former schoolmates. If I make it to the 45th or 50th, I plan on attending other get-togethers over the school’s reunion weekend, just to have a chance to renew acquaintance with more of them.
Perhaps it’s true you cannot go home again. But if you take a moment to get over your own insecurities, I learned, you actually can share fond memories looking back with others who were there.
Pat Grimes, a former South Bay resident, writes from Ypsilanti, Mich. He can be reached at pgwriter@inbox.com
