Reunions - a blast from the past?

Reunions – a blast from the past?

        The attached photo was taken at the Hoffman Galleria where all kinds of items are sold, including this sign.  An all-school reunion was held in my hometown recently, and I was there but not in the way I used to be, not the way I was in past reunions.  What has changed?

        I used to revel in the memories of high school: cheerleading, basketball, social studies, teachers, friends, exciting experiences.  Talking about those days with classmates and schoolmates was a highlight of planned or accidental meetings.  In my own thoughts, I could recreate the feelings, whether happy or sad, of good old school days.  “Weren’t we crazy?  Weren’t we the best class ever?  Wasn’t that the best class ever?”

        As the days and months and years pass by with plans, accomplishments, joys, sadness, family, the past has taken on a new shade of color.  The brilliant “high definition” pictures and videos of those memories have lost the clarity I once knew.  Has middle age led to an aging television memory?  The HD is gone and is becoming black and white. If I try hard enough I can conjure up the emotions of the first class dance in seventh grade, or bringing the ball down the court of our very first girls’ interscholastic basketball game.  And those feelings are pleasurable, but they no longer provide the ego-centered entertainment they once did.

       Instead, I want to visit about my schoolmates’ present lives: health, retirement, grandchildren.  My own future is less important to me, as well remembering my past.  It must be the evolution of growing up and moving on.