what’s 30 years, anyway?

If you are lucky enough still to be in touch with the peo­ple who knew you when you were lit­tle — and I’m talk­ing LIT­TLE, like new­born baby lit­tle — then you will know how much fun I have just had over the past four days at my High School Reunion.  Thir­ty years!

I doubt that I ever would have gone to this reunion but for two things: my moth­er, and Facebook.

I love it that my moth­er still lives in the house where I grew up, so that going back “home” feels like going back in time.  I know that one day, this sit­u­a­tion will prob­a­bly change, and I’ll no longer sleep in my child­hood home, cook in the kitchen where I learned to cook 30-some years ago, look around me at the fur­ni­ture that my dear dad built.  So I’m cher­ish­ing it as long as I can.

I love being picked up at the Indi­anapo­lis air­port — my first air­port, of so many now! — by my mom and broth­er, dri­ven home in the hot sum­mer twi­light to arrive at the famil­iar house, my moth­er’s pride and joy.

For some rea­son, my sis­ter’s bed­room became the guest room, so I set­tle in for what is always a peace­ful, nos­tal­gic, sleep, and in the morn­ing take the tour.  The gar­dens are look­ing gor­geous, even in the near-drought con­di­tions that spell August in Indiana.

It’s fun to walk around with Mom as she points out the var­i­ous new plants and to look with nos­tal­gic sad­ness at what used to be Dad’s toma­to patch.  But things change.  I just like it when they don’t change too much.

With­in min­utes, though, it was time to get to work for the first of many par­ties, try­ing to take advan­tage of every hour I was in town.  And for the first time ever, I had com­pa­ny cook­ing in the kitchen: Chef Todd!

For ages now, my moth­er, who nev­er liked to cook at the best of times, has been eat­ing less and less of what she should, so this sum­mer for her birth­day present, my sis­ter bril­liant­ly found help for her, in the shape of tall, warm, friend­ly Chef Todd, who will be fill­ing her fridge and freez­er with healthy treats for the fore­see­able future.  He’s not just a great cook.  He’s great com­pa­ny.  And he loves my mother.

“I’m going to get her feel­ing great,” he said with con­vic­tion, chop­ping a sof­frito for a veg­etable meat­loaf, pep­pers for crab­cakes, gar­lic for a car­rot and gin­ger puree.  And I believe him.  Since there is noth­ing that our fam­i­ly could pos­si­bly want more for our beau­ti­ful moth­er, my heart’s a lit­tle lighter for her than it was a week ago.

I, at his side, was mak­ing chick­en meat­balls, toma­to-moz­zarel­la sal­ad, cucum­ber-dill sal­ad, fruit sal­ad, for a lit­tle group of very good friends.  They arrived in groups, say­ing out on the front porch, “We can smell the food already!”  We decamped to the porch to enjoy the food and each oth­er’s company.

Among this group are Joy, the girl who lived in the oth­er half of the duplex to which my par­ents brought me home from the hos­pi­tal, and her mom Janet, my moth­er’s best friend for life.  My old­est friends!  And grade school friends, and high school friends.  After a bit, Todd, the “hon­orary girl”, arrived, call­ing the reunion “Face­book Live!”  He is one of my favorite peo­ple in the world.

I adore my mom’s porch, no mat­ter how hot it gets.  There is always enough sparkling wine and ice-cold water to refresh us, so we sat on and on, gos­sip­ing, rem­i­nisc­ing about high school musi­cals, swim team, the school news­pa­per, favorite teach­ers, creepy teach­ers.  Then, “Oh my good­ness, is that the time?  I have kids to pick up!” and every­one dis­persed into the late after­noon, me to make hum­mous to take to the NEXT party.

And what a par­ty it was.

In my child­hood, there were two Amys.  The Amy I met first is “Amy” to our group of inti­mates.  Then we got to high school and met “The Oth­er Amy,” who point­ed out, at this sum­mer’s par­ty, that strict­ly speak­ing as the old­er of the two Amys, she is in fact “The Orig­i­nal Amy,” and wore a name tag to that effect!

Amy pos­sess­es one of the wickedest wits I know, along with a gen­eros­i­ty of spir­it that just makes you want to keep her by your side.

With us in this love­ly pho­to is my chum Karen, with whom I have recon­nect­ed grate­ful­ly on dear Face­book!  How we always under­stood each oth­er in mat­ters of the heart, of home­work, of school affairs.  And she has­n’t changed a bit.  Even more fun, if pos­si­ble, and one of those moms who under­stands and shares my ten­den­cy to cry at the drop of a hat.  That is a good friend to have.

This mag­nif­i­cent par­ty was giv­en by my “first” Amy, who is a pro­fes­sion­al gar­den­er.  It shows.  Look at this paradise!

The girl has a piano in her gar­den, naturally.

We walked around the gar­den, light­ing her can­dles.  These were made by putting an emp­ty tuna can on top of a pole in the ground, then plac­ing a votive inside a Ball jar into the tuna can.  How clever is that?  The whole place was strung with fairy lights, a heav­en­ly spot on a sum­mer’s evening.

And what would a water fea­ture be with­out a pair of legs?

Being reunit­ed with John, my part­ner in musi­cal the­atre crime, was worth the whole trip.  He is an inde­scrib­able com­bi­na­tion of class clown, con­fi­dante extra­or­di­naire, and sage.  Incred­i­bly tol­er­ant, full of lim­er­icks, and delight­ing in every pos­si­ble ambi­gu­i­ty of mean­ing.  I have missed him ter­ri­bly over the years.  Here he is with my dar­ling Jami, who strug­gled through pre-fresh­man-year sum­mer PE with me in 1979.

There aren’t enough adjec­tives to describe my “first” Amy, fel­low Camp­fire Girl, swim team mem­ber, co-con­spir­a­tors in many a school musi­cal, the host­ess with the mostest.  When I am reunit­ed with her, the years just drop away and we gig­gle as much as ever we did.  How wise I was to gain her as my friend over 40 years ago!

John WOULD of course pho­to­bomb us.

“Do you remem­ber, Amy,” I said, “when we sat togeth­er in the bath­tub with a plas­tic toy that had a sprin­kler bot­tom, and we decid­ed that if we could build some­thing just like it real­ly BIG, and attach it to an air­plane, we could solve all the prob­lems of the desert?”

She did remember.

When I was in kinder­garten, I walked to the neigh­bor­hood school up the street from my house with my big broth­er, tak­ing part in every delight a five-year-old could imag­ine, includ­ing “Fun Night,” which was an amuse­ment park set up once  a year inside the school.  At this event, one could com­pete at var­i­ous games to win the top prize: a gold­fish brought home in a Chi­nese-food con­tain­er.  And nat­u­ral­ly, “Fun Night” elect­ed a King and Queen from each grade.  Guess who rep­re­sent­ed kindergarten?

D.J had­n’t changed a bit, as fun­ny and full of gal­lantry as ever.

I think my “Fun Night” crown is still in my child­hood closet.

And how about Dave, also a kinder­garten bud­dy, whose beau­ti­ful mom sewed all my high-school musi­cal costumes?

The sweet­est pos­si­ble guys.  Dave took the time the next day to stop by to vis­it my mom, and to rem­i­nisce about the days our moms were friends.

There just isn’t room to describe all the beau­ti­ful friend­ships renewed under Amy’s fairy lights.  Final­ly, I went home to sit on the edge of my mom’s bed to tell her every sin­gle sto­ry, just as I had as a child.

The next day brought lunch with the fam­i­ly of our beloved Lon­don hous­esit­ter, Elsie!  Her moth­er and grand­moth­er met us in Irv­ing­ton, the quaint lit­tle neigh­bor­hood where my moth­er’s house is, at a dar­ling cafe called “The Leg­end.”  Delicious!

There, we heard sto­ries of our Lon­don house where they’ve just come from vis­it­ing Elsie, and they bore pho­tographs of our beloved cats, who look huge in com­par­i­son with our Red Gate Farm kit­tens.  We have made friends for life.

I just bare­ly had time to brush my teeth and change clothes before it was time for the next par­ty: this time at the “orig­i­nal” Amy’s par­ents’ house, a porch I had­n’t sat on for 30 years.  Icy-cold tum­blers of vod­ka and Izzy, and more friends.

And it was time for the offi­cial high school “Block Par­ty,” a nice, hot evening’s walk away from Amy’s par­ents’ house.  We walked in a pack, still talk­ing non­stop about the past, about our kids, our jobs, our fam­i­lies.  I felt intense envy of my sev­er­al friends whose par­ents are just a five-minute walk or dri­ve away, rather than an ocean and then two air­plane flights away.

The “Block Par­ty” itself was a hoot!  The band (led by my cher­ished friend Kevin) was fab­u­lous­ly loud and the songs were from the 80s, so every­one could sing along.  Some peo­ple danced (not me!).

What fun catch­ing up with Greg, who was Snoopy to my Wood­stock all those years ago!

And Steve, who was Emile to my Nel­lie in “South Pacif­ic,” here with his child­hood sweet­heart Saun­dra and their beau­ti­ful girls.

Final­ly we real­ized we were starv­ing, and a pack of us aban­doned the Block Par­ty to wan­der over to the restau­rant where I’d had lunch, to beg them to stay open late for our table of 12!  And they did.  For HOURS.  I haven’t laughed so hard in recent mem­o­ry, at sto­ries of child­hood (and lat­er) romances, crush­es that nev­er mate­ri­al­ized, crush­es that DID mate­ri­al­ize, some mild­ly raunchy lim­er­icks.  Pos­si­bly my fond­est moment was being described as “the orig­i­nal Hermione Granger” by John, a descrip­tion that made me laugh at my for­mer self, and also feel a bit of a retroac­tive kin­ship with my own daugh­ter, who is sure­ly just one such.

We all tried to ana­lyze what makes us feel so com­fort­able with each oth­er.  Is it the feel­ing you can only have for peo­ple who helped make you what you are?  Peo­ple who knew you when you were build­ing your per­son­al­i­ty, mak­ing the choic­es that would deter­mine who you became, and so those peo­ple are part of your essen­tial fab­ric?  They knew you when you were learn­ing to do all the things that would become your skills and tal­ents, who saw you through your first dis­ap­point­ments and tri­umphs.  There’s no ques­tion of wor­ry­ing about who are you now, because these peo­ple know who you’ve ALWAYS been.  Total trust among peo­ple who have nev­er hurt each oth­er’s feel­ings, who have stayed friends all their lives.

Final­ly we closed the restau­rant, leav­ing enor­mous tips as a thank-you.  And we strolled through the dark Irv­ing­ton streets, meet­ing cat after cat, pass­ing can­dlelit or lam­plit porch after porch.

To one more par­ty!  At “orig­i­nal” Amy’s broth­er Jim’s beau­ti­ful Irv­ing­ton house.  Of course, we sat on the porch.

Mike, in the mid­dle between John and Tom, was a 16th-birth­day crush of mine.  He want­ed to clear the air about not rec­i­p­ro­cat­ing my crush.  He was forgiven.

It was 2 a.m.  Time to go home, to say good­bye.  Not, one hopes, for anoth­er 30 years…

Lunch the next day (feel­ing slight­ly hun­gover and com­plete­ly exhaust­ed!  not to men­tion hoarse) was over piz­za with my soul-mate Sheri (nei­ther of us brought a cam­era, sil­ly).  Here we solved all the world’s prob­lems and talked about my remark­able daugh­ter, of whom Sheri is a pas­sion­ate admir­er, although they have nev­er met.  Our time togeth­er sim­ply flew, leav­ing us with a thou­sand top­ics unspo­ken, as always.  Anoth­er rea­son to come back.

Mom and I spent a qui­et evening watch­ing tele­vi­sion and chat­ting, look­ing through old pho­to albums and let­ters as I always do when I’m “home.”

And then I was off, for a day of trav­el and thought, remem­ber­ing con­ver­sa­tions and a thou­sand tight hugs, feel­ing I had stepped back into a very hap­py past full of char­ac­ters I could­n’t invent, they are so var­ied and dear to me, each in their own way.  All of us back to our ordi­nary lives, our fam­i­lies and oth­er “homes.”

I was very hap­py to be reunit­ed with Avery, John and the hydrangea, now in full end-of-sum­mer blossom.

But I brought a lit­tle bit of Indi­ana home with me.