Reaching Cruising Altitude

My bright red 30th reunion "Anniversary Report" came in the mail yesterday, a harbinger of many 1993 classmates preparing to gather in Cambridge this June. I withdrew it gingerly from the cardboard envelope as if the crimson binding would bite my fingers - in a Hogwarts cum Harvard sci-fi move - for not contributing this go-round. Rob asked me why I didn't submit anything, and I didn't have a quick answer. I remember writing something for the 25th reunion and given that the pandemic created a time-lapse in my brain between 2018 and today, it feels like yesterday that I contributed.

Classmate life summaries have always been tricky for me. Tenured professors, award-winning authors, heads of hospitals, life-saving doctors, judges, cabinet posts, etc. etc. rise out of the page to threaten my small narrative and self-confidence. I hesitated to open the book but once the list of names was opened, I couldn't help skimming through, looking for old friends and roommates.

Far fewer people wrote this year, perhaps for the same reason, perhaps because the 30th reunion is not one of the "big" ones. I was startled by the tone of the entries that do exist - prior emphasis on career triumphs and goals has been replaced by a major focus on relationships with friends and families, the loss of connection during COVID, illness, divorce, addiction. While not startled that these life changes impacted my college companions, I am blown away by the vulnerability, the desire to help people going through similar struggles. When I say that my classmates never revealed weakness in college, it would be an understatement. Everyone was on top of things, everyone busy, driven, outwardly confident and intimidating. How the wheel of life has turned for us all.

I'm grateful for the openness of people that used to scare me with their intelligence and brazen confidence. I'm warmed by love for parents, children, significant others that was expressed beautifully in many entries, and saddened by the additional deaths that transpired in the last five years. Real life priorities have emerged in the anniversary report and they shockingly align with mine.

One regret - I didn't come up with the most trenchant line in the whole report, a perfect summary of life in our 50's expressed in three words:  "reaching cruising altitude." Leave it to one nameless classmate to put me in my place with delicious writing.