50 years later

Today my "couch" has been the leather seat of my car as I traveled to Round One of a three-day 50th high school reunion. Since I am skipping Rounds Two, Three, Four, and Five, which involve two different country clubs and a football game and some formalities at the school, tonight will have to do it for me. And it was just enough. I left happy for the chance to make contact, probably for the last time, with people who really knew me when. I got to tell a few people I loved them then and still do.

What I had not expected was the almost masquerade quality of the beginning interactions. "Who are you?" isn't far from the "Who are you supposed to be?" we asked at annual Hallowe'en parades during our school years. It's probably better not to get too far into the weeds about existential identities or costumed identities, but when you know what people looked like at five and twelve and fifteen and eighteen, their seventh decade appearance seems like a disguise. In some you see something familiar in the eyes, or in a particular facial expression, but in others there's just nothing recognizable.

The name tags help, but the reality is that most of us need big print at this age, so now we're leaning toward someone's chest to read the name rather than ask it. And of course there are the ringers, the ones who never were in our class but who married into it or are just dating it (yes, even at nearly 70).

For me, the evening started when I hit the Garden State Parkway around the Oranges and caught that chemical whiff that I remembered from many trips home from the Jersey Shore. A few minutes later, and I was no longer driving. When I saw the Bloomfield-Belleville Exit (150?) in my mind I gave the wheel to my 1958 model boyfriend, Eddie B. I met Eddie at the shore the week after graduation and we raced up and down the GSP for most of the summer until he left for Great Lakes Naval Base and eventually Viet Nam. If my parents knew.... But Eddie had a '54 Ford convertible with a '57 TBird engine and it was made to race.

Later I checked into my hotel, which happens to be a very short distance from the memorial park where my parents and grandparents are buried. A good thing, because if I get creamed on Butcher Boulevard Route 17 (called that even in the 1950s and much more exciting today), they can just toss my remains over the fence. Seriously, if people think that 278 has its moments and that Atlanta's Spaghetti Junction is a challenge, they need to try getting to something necessary, like their hotel, by crossing a lane of cars streaming off the GSP at some ridiculous speed and 2 feet apart. I am too old for this. The nerves may not be the first to go, but they're high on the list.