Reunion brings flood of memories
Tuesdays are not a day to go shopping
The Front Page
Morning Update
Wednesday, October 13, 2021
By Ken Tingley
The Seymour High School Class of 1975 held a class reunion this weekend that I did not attend.
My memories of high school are pleasant enough, but I never had much interest in looking back, of rekindling old relationships and seeing how things turned out for my classmates. I had moved on long ago. I don’t believe I ever set foot in my high school after I graduated.
Two of my closest friends - they were high school sweethearts - still live there and I see them from time to time. Another friend died seven years ago. Others drifted away. My brother still lives in the house where we grew up in Seymour and I have many cousins living around that area of southern Connecticut. I’m connected, but still aloof.
Twenty years ago they held the first reunion. I balked. I saw it as a weakness to go back instead of pushing onward. Perhaps, the memory of those awkward teenage years lived on in me; they they irrevocably connected high school and the people I shared that time with to my own shortcomings.
When my friend Jackie died in 2014, I was introduced to several former classmates at the wake. I didn’t recognize them and they did not recognized me.
Maybe, it was that acknowledgement that we had aged, that our youth was so long ago separated by this chasm of time.
My friends wanted me to attend the reunion again this time, but I balked again.
I posted on the reunion page that I had published a collection of my columns. Perhaps, there was an opportunity to sell some books and raise my own stock. I was surprised at the kind words and congratulations from people I had not seen or corresponded with in 40 years. I later learned several bought the book.
After the reunion on Saturday, I saw photos on social media.
I looked at the group photo. I recognized just two people from the photo. One was a close friend, the other one of my basketball teammates who stood out because he was 6-6.
Over the past seven years, I had twice written columns about high school friends who had died. One was a close friend, the other the star of the football team who I remembered as one of the most gifted athletes I had ever seen.
After seeing the photos, I thought I could contribute something to the reunion after all, something that I couldn’t have done back in high school.
I shared the two columns about our fallen classmates on the reunion page.
I apologized for not being able to make it to Connecticut. I explained I had planned on submitting the columns before the reunion, but I thought they might fill in the gaps for two classmates who had left us too soon.
Leading up to the reunion, I learned that 45 members of our class of 270 had already passed.
What startled me was the feedback about the tributes.
I was thanked me for posting the two columns and complimented on my writing and how it captured the essence of our classmates.
The names on social media crystallized and faces appeared from 45 years ago.
“A great story. We missed you at the gathering. It was humbling to talk to and see our somewhat earliest friends and reflect on what shaped us,” wrote Lou Enama.
Maybe that is what I was missing about the reunion. Perhaps, there was an opportunity for introspection.
I remembered Lou.
We had played football together. He was a lineman, but I don’t recall knowing him well.
“Your book just arrived in the mail the other day. Looking forward to reading it,” Lou wrote.
I told Lou to tell what he thinks about it. He said he wasn’t a big reader so it would probably take him some time.
He wasn’t a big reader, but he bought the book.
Was he curious?
Was he being supportive of an old classmate?
Was there still some of the brotherhood of old football teammates?
Or maybe he was curious about what I had been doing for the past 45 years.
Afterward, I opened up the high school yearbook for the first time in forever. I noted the kind wishes and fleeting memories written next to the photos of my classmates. I hoped things turned out well for them. I hoped they had been happy.
Maybe, there will be another reunion soon.
The small things
I had an appointment on Aviation Road so I decided I would stop at the bakery and surprise my wife with a delicious treat.
It was closed.
I decided to change course and stop at one of our favorite breakfast places to pick up the cider donuts they make fresh every day.
It was closed.
This is Tuesday in our community.
This is because people refuse to get vaccinated.
Columbus Day
I mowed my lawn on Columbus Day this year.
This was the weekend when we consider taking a boat cruise on Lake George while the leaves are at their peak. But everything is still mostly green.
I love a late fall, but this is something different.
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