Don’t You (Forget About Me)

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My high school was a small, selective public high school on the campus of Montclair State College that admitted 30 students in each grade, 15 boys and 15 girls. It went from seventh through twelfth grade, so you can imagine how well we got to know each other, such a small group spending six years together. We kept in touch after high school for a while. Several of my classmates came to visit me in Cambridge, since that was the epicenter of the college universe at that time. But years passed, and we gradually drifted apart. In those days before the internet, it took some actual effort to keep in touch. And especially after my parents sold our house and moved into a retirement community in central Jersey, there wasn’t even the possibility of seeing old classmates when I came home to visit.

The school was shut down some time in the mid-70s, so there wasn’t any infrastructure remaining to plan or hold reunions. I found out later that there had been an informal 20th reunion in 1988, organized by classmates who still lived in Montclair, but nobody knew how to get in touch with me, so I didn’t know about it. And I was having a baby that summer, so I’m not sure if I would have been able to make it back to New Jersey anyway.

Some time in the early 2000s I discovered a website called classmates.com and signed up on it. There were two levels of membership. With a free membership, you could see the names and profiles of other people from the schools you had attended and maybe also send them a message. With a paid membership, there were more options and you could get more information. Naturally I went for the free membership. I can’t remember if I made any connections on the website, but the one valuable thing that occurred was that I got an invitation to an all-class reunion that someone from the class of ’62 was organizing, to be held in April 2006. She sent the notice to everyone who had registered on classmates.com, and asked us all to pass it on to any other people for whom we had contact information.

How was it possible to have an all-class reunion, you say? The school only started in the 1930s, and ended as I said in the mid-70s, and there were 30 people in each year. So even if everyone showed up, that would be a smaller crowd than a lot of high school classes – 40 years times 30 people equals 1200 – and of course you would never get everyone showing up. The event was to be a Saturday night dinner-dance at a restaurant in northern New Jersey fairly near the campus of the college where the high school had been located.

At that point I think I was in touch with only two people from the class, Robin and Bruce. I had found Robin through an internet search, because she was teaching a class at the Lexington, Mass. Adult Center, and her name popped up on their website. Key to finding her, of course, was the fact that, although she had changed her name when she got married, she was now divorced and had gone back to using her own name. So we had been in touch for a few years, and in fact my kids and I had stayed with her in Lexington when we visited Harvard on Ben’s college tour in 2005. I can’t remember how I found Bruce, it may have been as a result of the planning list for the all-class reunion.

My job at the time was not that demanding, and the lure of the internet was strong. I could sit in my office and surf the net without anyone knowing. I decided to try to track down everyone from my graduating class, which was actually only 24 people, not 30, because we had lost some along the way, either because their families moved away or they just decided to go back to the regular public school. Bruce had the same idea, and so we ended up splitting up the class between us. And in a matter of a few months, we found EVERYBODY! I wish I had a clearer memory of what search techniques we used. The men were easier to find than the women, because most of the women, even in that increasingly feminist era, had changed their names when they got married, something I never could have done. But we found them all. And two-thirds of them came to the reunion.

In front of the former high school building

We turned it into a three-day event. Those of us who didn’t still have parents living in the area all stayed at the same hotel, and Friday night we had a class dinner at the hotel restaurant. Saturday morning there were tours of the college campus, and of the former high school building, which were arranged by the all-class reunion organizers. Saturday evening was the big dinner-dance. And on Sunday, one of the women who still lived in the area generously hosted a brunch for our class at her country club (where the featured image was taken).

Everyone in the class was still alive and reasonably healthy in 2006. Since that time two classmates have died. So I’m glad we had the reunion when we did.

On the other hand, my attempts to find friends from elementary school and from summer camps have not been successful at all. I’m sure it is because all the women got married and changed their names. Every woman who I was friends with in the ’80s (when I got married) kept her own name, or else hyphenated, so I thought the  custom of name changing had died, but obviously I was wrong.

The person I have tried hardest to find, with no success, is Amy, my roommate from the Syracuse summer program who I wrote about in a couple of earlier stories. I have used every search technique I can think of, and reached only dead ends. But I will keep trying!

Anne

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Anne

She was a quiet girl, soft of face

soft of movement,

and her long brown hair

often curtained her eyes

so as to be soft of broadcasting feelings.

Both of us were novitiates to the 

buzzing tech-worshipping work world

where we met.

We hit it off, mostly 

because at age 18,  

we knew everything, and

we both needed to escape

the cubicle-filled 

fluorescent space to go 

outside at lunchtime

even in the rain, 

even when our co-workers

shook their heads 

when we would come back to the

sluggish, dull-office afternoon in wet clothes

and muddy shoes and 

secrets shared.

We would buy goldfish crackers

and bottled Pepsis-  munching

crappy calories and anti-health food 

as we shared our histories,

sitting on the carefully edged, mowed and 

greenly-fragrant lawns spotted

with islands of rebel daisies making a stand,

or striding through the suburban

neighborhoods, or using louder voices

as the rain pounded on the roof of her

adored mustang convertible.

She slowly revealed,

one story at a time

that her father drank a lot

that he beat her mama 

pretty regularly 

and worse for her mother

he had flaunted

on-going affairs, with trampy-looking women

who wore bright red lipstick, just a bit smeared,

and painted their eye-brows on in

a way that left them always looking

just a little surprised.

Then her mother would melt into

one of her paralyzed puddle times 

when she forgot

to eat, or bathe or dress., until she 

could remember her children.

One day Anne gently moved

the hair from her face to say

she had given a baby up for adoption

when she was 16, and since then

she finds herself compulsively 

staring at any child

who was female and the age of the

vacuum left in her heart.

Then she almost whispered

her boyfriend also beat her sometimes,

only when he was drunk,

only when she forgot to keep her mouth shut,

only because he has so much stress. 

Years later I found out that

in her mind she felt that it 

was my incredulity at her staying

that helped her leave, though

my memory of her flight was different.

She has moved back and forth 

across the country, trying to outrun

the darkness that would close 

round her throat each month

with the bright red blood

flowing from her, the hormonal

shadows coloring every

contentment with grief

She called me sometimes,

often it had been months

since she surfaced to tell me:

I have just checked my son

into an institution to keep him alive

or

I couldn’t make my marriage work

or

both my brother and sister are battling addictions

or

I have found my long lost daughter!

But mostly

and that the storms of her childhood

refused to give her sunshine.

She was crumbling into herself in the blackness. 

Today, as the rain finally

pours its treasure on

this drought- parched land,

that  finally-found

daughter worriedly 

wrote to tell me

it has been 2 years 

since she has heard

from her mother, 

hopeful that I may know how/where she is.

My mind

flashed on crunching 

dry fish-shaped

wrongly- orange 

crackers

looking through a silver- dropped curtain

on the window

while this sweet gentle voice explained 

in her quiet, softly sad

way, how she deserved what 

love gave her.