ROADS NOT TAKEN

A 50th high school reunion takes me home – but have “me” and “home” become unrecognizable to each other?

(Ed. Note: I am using all my willpower NOT to write about the continuing tragedy in Uvalde, and in America. In addition to the violence and human suffering of the Massacre itself, we now have layers of misinformation, covering of asses, and macho performance art from state and federal leaders. The goal of all this effort: to make the Massacre itself a cloudy soup of memory and sorrow, and to ensure nothing happens that would prevent another one. This constitutes a separate attack on common decency and even on reality itself.)

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Next weekend, I will travel to San Antonio to attend two reunions:

1)   my 50th high school reunion, and

2)   because I was a member of a religious order for ten years, a meet-up of a group of people who, like me, are no longer in that community.

The fact they are occurring on the same weekend creates the opportunity for me to attend both. Both groups were very important to me at earlier times in my life. I’m attending the reunions at least in part to remind myself of those times and to understand them better. I will talk about my high school reunion in this installment, and the get-together with former my fellow religious next week.

THE ROAD NOT TAKEN

By Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

I have always loved this poem, with its elegiac theme of seizing a unique destiny – the road less traveled. In fact, I always mis-named the poem, “The Road Less Traveled,” until a smart friend of mine[1] pointed out that’s not the title. The protagonist of the poem chooses what he thinks to be the less-traveled road, but “… the passing there / Had worn them really about the same, / And both that morning equally lay / In leaves no step had trodden black.”

As I get older and, I hope, wiser I realize that, while my personal life journey certainly has some unique aspects, the road I’ve been on is much the same as everyone else’s.

I am an alumnus of an all-boys Catholic high school in downtown San Antonio; there were about 200 in my graduating class, walking across the stage at the old Municipal Auditorium one fine May afternoon in 1972. I received, I think, one hell of an education, including a curiosity about the world and an interest in social justice and the Good Society that have been major themes in my life.

My high school years teased me with the possibilities of a world beyond high school, beyond San Antonio. One of my teachers lassoed a few of us into a study project on poverty in San Antonio. I learned that San Antonio was the 10th largest city in America, something I’d never have guessed. It was also the poorest – something I also would never have guessed. We did a report on how to eliminate poverty in San Antonio. I’m sure none of our recommendations were even remotely feasible in the real world of political horse-trading, but the experience fixed my eye on the possibility I could help solve big problems.

Once I graduated, I was out of there – the school, my classmates and friends, my parent’s home, San Antonio. I went off to college in another state, returning to Texas only for the summers, which I spent as a camp counselor outside the picturesquely named Mountain Home, Texas. Although I cherished many of my classmates, I did not make much of an effort to stay in touch with any but a few. My horizons were much larger than the city limits of San Antonio, I felt.

After my first year of college, I returned to San Antonio in time to attend my high school’s annual festival in early May. Wandering among the raffle tickets, dunking booths, and turkey legs, I saw a classmate who proudly introduced me to his wife and newborn baby! Holy crap! He’d gotten married and had a baby in less than a year after graduating! I remember thinking how structured and tied down his future must have looked to him, with a wife and child so soon after graduating from high school. My life principle then was keep your options open. In truth, his opportunities were no less marvelous than mine, just different; something it took me most of my lifetime to realize. “Both that morning equally lay in leaves no step had trodden black.”

A few of us stayed in touch after graduation – letters, summer camping trips, meet-ups to drink beer and listen to Willie Nelson at John T. Floore’s Country Store. Although my affection and bond of brotherhood with them remained, our communications and time together fizzled out as career, relationships and family asserted themselves as priorities. “Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.“

I attended our 20th class reunion, in 1992. I don’t know what I expected, but the experience was unsatisfying, to put it mildly. In retrospect, I wanted to be treated as an accomplished successful person, but to them I was still just one of the guys. I even won, to my ongoing mortification, a prize for having gained the most weight since we’d graduated. I stayed away from reunions and other class activities for the next 30 years.

But the internet changed everything, as it is wont to do. A group of my fellow grads who had kept in touch with each other over the years created a Facebook page for our class. Once I was a member, I knew about the beer and burger nights, bowling, golf, and other ways in which they maintained their fraternity. I was updated on jobs, and kids, and vacation trips to cool places. I also came to know, as 40 years became 45 and edged closer to 50, of the deaths of some of us.

And so, after 50 years in which I was not really a presence in the life of my classmates, some subset of the class is gathering this weekend, including, I hope, some of my best friends from those days of my life. What is the point, especially since we have become senior citizens? We can relive (for the umpteenth time) the game-winning 30-yard pass, the buzzer-beating three-point shot, the ROTC drill team championship – but who cares? Will we want to talk about those things, or about the men we’ve become – the wins and losses at life we’ve endured, and the role our time together in high school had in shaping us? That would be an interesting series of conversations, and I’m looking forward to it.

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[1]                She knows who she is.