Dear Ali,
This year, if all goes as planned, I will attend seven weddings. Apparently, that’s to be expected — 2022 will have the most nuptials since 1984. This year will be very expensive. It will also be fun! Skirts and desserts and dancing with no shoes.
This is also the year of two reunions. One is for college, the other is for high school — and I’m helping to plan both. (Lame, I know.) One gathering is in April. The other is in June. One is in the East, the other in the West. Both involve Zoom committee meetings, Google Doc agendas, budgets, registration campaigns, and COVID-19 safety protocols.
Will grenadine make a signature cocktail look red? Like, really red? “Clackamas High School red-and-black” red? Can we price out some wood-fired pizza options? Will putting up the tent in that location block the view of the hills? Who has the contact information for our junior-year English teacher? Do Ubers go to that part of Massachusetts? These are the questions that consume my days.
Also: Will anyone come? And is it stupid to care?
Whether anyone will come is to be determined. (Spread the word! Tell your friends.) But is it stupid to care? Well, that’s a question I need to answer now. Why bring old college classmates together? These people live all over the world. They’re busy doing important work, holding diverse views, and forming their own families. Why ask us to remember some foolish, frenzied years we spent together when we weren’t yet fully ourselves?
High school relations are even more tenuous. We were all connected only by chance, just birth year and public school–district geography. Many of us didn’t know each other even back then. My graduating class had more than 600 people in it.
—
“Planning events” is kind of silly. Right? It’s for suckers. It’s easy. It’s frivolous. It is ordering the takeout for a work lunch, making sure to get some noodles sans the sauce your colleague hates. It is tying ribbons on bridal shower favors, and checking to be sure all the loops are same-sized. It is drawing up a wedding seating chart as strategic as any general’s battle plans. These tasks, whenever I’ve done them, have the tendency to make me feel a little goofy. Kind of embarrassed. This is women’s work, all color and flowers and sugar, no substance. It’s nice. But it’s not serious.
Never mind that these jobs — making reservations and speaking with vendors, imagining how to create a space where people feel comfortable — are often the most difficult tasks I tackle in a day, involving calculations and strategy and creativity. They’re hard. They’re hard to do well.
And so I’ve convinced myself that it’s important to care about the details. It’s important to care about caring for people: not with extravagance and flair, not with perfectionism and anxiety, but with thoughtfulness and warmth.
The reunions will be nice. I hope. But this doesn’t solve the problem of the reunions themselves. I worry that only pathetic people care about remembering: people who are living in the past, and haven’t moved on. Or maybe only arrogant people care — people who want to gloat about everything they’ve acquired, how much better they’re doing than everyone else.
Or maybe: Reunions can be about something more.
—
Back to the weddings. I love the people whose names are on the invitations. But to be honest, I’m not just in it for the happy couples. I’m there for the guests. There’s little I love more than watching cousins and childhood friends, grandmothers and colleagues, all clinking glasses of champagne together. It makes no sense! And it makes perfect sense.
Here, in community, something is revealed about the bride or groom I thought I already knew. All of these people, some bound by choice and others by blood, the friends of parents and parents of friends — it’s beautiful to see the richness of our existence, how connected we are just because. A groom may not be “close” with everyone who’s there. He may not even like all of these people. But they’re there, right? Show me a speech given by a shy father or a stumbling sister and I’ll show you myself, over there at Table 8, covering my sobs with a cloth napkin. Suddenly, I’m newly aware that all of us have childhoods and histories and personalities, only visible when we’re surrounded by people we love — or at least, people we’ve lived alongside, people who’ve shared something with us. A set of years. A place on a map. The song that was popular in 2014. The chili they served in the dining hall on Tuesdays.
People we’ve lived alongside. I’m under no illusion that these reunions, with their BBQ plates and commemorative tote bags, will bring any long-lost lovers together or rekindle any friendships. A nice occasion, no outbreaks of infectious disease, a break-even budget. These are my wishes.
And also, perhaps, for a sense that we all have belonged somewhere, and will always belong there, no matter what. To a town. To a generation. To a homeroom. These people — the ones whose names you’ve forgotten, the ones you might not see until the next reunion — know you. It’s true! At least, a little. At least, partially. That purple sweatshirt you used to wear. The way you used to style your hair. The math teacher you both had. How the turf on the football field smelled after a hot day. That diner up the street from the campus, and its French toast. That one cold winter. That election. Together, we comprise a collective history. We ground each other in time and space. We make up a history and a people, whether we like it or not, whether or not we work at it, whether or not we “stay connected” or even “care.” We’re still part of the class. We’re still part of the story.
Too much to ask of the Clackamas High School ten-year reunion: to remind us of where we stand in the human community, to make us feel a little more loved? Eh, maybe. Enjoy that bright red cocktail, at least. Don’t forget to register!
Love,
Kate
My book recommendation
Jhumpa Lahiri’s Whereabouts — written in Italian, translated by the author into English — does not portray a person in community. Instead, it’s a diary of loneliness, missed opportunities and reluctant commitments. It’s sad: but beautiful! You can read it in one sitting.
I’m also halfway through The Sympathizer. Very good. Taking me a while. Overdue. Very sorry to the next person on the library hold list…
Reunions can be fraught. I went to school on the opposite side of the metro area (Aloha), and our 10 yr. seemed more about posturing/proving you’d “made it” than anything else. A terrible DJ, not enough food, and a strangely poor choice of venue made it even worse (though somehow also hilarious with the benefit of hindsight).
The good news is that by the 20th, everyone had grown out of that, and there was a real sense of gratitude and being happy to reconnect. I hope yours is more like the latter.