Who Says You Can’t Go Home?

I distinctly remember my parents going to their 20th high school reunion.  It was 1986.  There were diets, new hair cuts (my mom sporting the then-stylish asymmetrical look) and certainly new outfits involved.  They had, after all, been high school sweethearts and they were really looking forward to meeting up with old friends. 

I was 14 at the time.  I hadn’t yet entered high school and surely couldn’t imagine being 20 years removed from it.

On Saturday, it was my turn to go to my 20th high schoool reunion.   I am as old as I remember my parents being on that night of the new hair cuts and outfits.  And this old gal had a great time catching up with old friends and chatting with others I literally hadn’t laid eyes on since 1990. 

If you didn’t grow up in New Jersey in the 1980s, I don’t know that I can sufficiently prepare you for the tragic fashion and hair that we grew up embracing.  I’m starting to think that Snooki owes us all a few bucks for stealing our look and trademarking it.  Here are two shots that an old friend unearthed for the occasion.

And here’s one from Saturday.  I’m really glad we gave up the Aqua Net.  It wasn’t all that becoming.

My parents moved away from my hometown after I graduated from college, as a result of their divorce.  Because they aren’t there, I rarely go back, although it’s not more than 40 minutes from where I live now.  It had probably been a couple of years since I had last driven up there. 

Every time I do make that drive, it really has an impact on me.  It’s that feeling of space and time being all mushed up.  Sure, things change — the old Grand Union is a Stop & Shop and they added a McDonald’s where no fast food had ever existed.  But so much is the same — The Old Forge where my dad would meet up with his buddies, the crazy winding roads that I can’t believe (really can’t believe) we learned to drive on, the gorgeous reservoir, the billion stars you can see at night because there are no streetlights.  And I like that it’s the same.  I like that this place is hermetically sealed in my memory as is, and that I can think of a thousand stories to go with every street I passed on the way to that reunion. 

I drove past my grandmother’s old house and the house my parents first bought a few blocks from her.  I drove past the lake where we had spent many summer afternoons, where I learned to swim and dive and play Marco Polo.  ??I drove past the old check verification business where I had my first job.  I drove past the neighborhood where we all drank bad beer in the woods. 

I felt 5 years old, I felt 12 years old, I felt 16 and I felt 38.  I felt both like the small child who had grown up here, and like the mom who had her two young kids back home with a babysitter while driving to the reunion. 

And the reunion itself was a lot of the same — this feeling of bouncing between nametags, bouncing between “I know I knew you,” and “I wish I had known you more” and “I’m so glad we still know each other.”  It’s odd, right?  Because it’s not just about the fact that you spent four years in a school together — it’s about all that stuff in between.  Being from that same town, that same place — and being happy to come back to it, to see what has changed and what has stayed exactly as your memory has preserved it.

So thanks LRHS Class of 90, it was really so much fun.