Erin,
I’m so glad you’re taking one for the team when it comes to attending reunions. I’ve never attended one myself, and don’t plan to change that any time soon. I actually switched high schools following my sophomore year, and I’m not sure the kids at either school would have the foggiest idea who I was if I did show up. This despite the fact that I’d probably look about the same: hunkered down at the end of the table, pony-tailed head stuck in a book. It turns out I still haven’t mastered the art of the curling iron, let alone the art of polite conversation.
It's funny, I’ve taken to replying to your letters at the end of the week, and by then I’ve forgotten all the—supposedly—hilarious things I had planned to say. Though honestly, this week has been a week of forgetting: On Wednesday we had one lovely day of sun (it snowed the next two days) and I went to the park with my youngest and entirely forgot I was driving carpool for my middle-grader.
Also forgotten:
that the field-trip I sent my husband on changed from a start time of 9:30 to 9:00
that I was supposed to bring supplies for my daughter’s school birthday celebration (summer birthday!)
that I was responsible for making dinner on Tues, Wed, and Thurs (you’d think I would have had in hand by Thursday)
that I promised I’d come to pick up Tilly early from preschool so we could practice the dance her class is doing for their graduation
that I needed to call and excuse my kids from school on Friday
that it would have been nice to make a sign for my husband to see at the end of his marathon
and that I needed to bring my power cords on our road trip.
Whew!
The sad thing is, I feel like there are a lot of other things I’ve forgotten too, but I can’t remember what they are just now… forgetting, apparently, is my theme for May. (I also keep telling people that it’s already the month of June. So, there’s that.)
Still, if I think hard about it, I believe all this forgetting is directly related to the fact that I’ve put myself in a sort of holding pattern over the past several weeks. Technically, I’m wrapping things up while waiting for new things to begin, but that has resulted in a kind of Never-Never Land existence, where I’m resistant to thinking of anything either behind me or in front. It’s as though I’ve closed my eyes in the hopes that whatever is supposed to have happened has happened and whatever is supposed to still happen will magically occur.
It’s like that moment when you’re changing lanes on the freeway, and you’ve looked at all the angles, but you know blind-spots still exist, and you decide to change lanes anyway. You just kind of hold your breath and hope you don’t hear a loud crashing sound in the next few seconds.
Or maybe it’s just the end of the school year, and my brain has fizzled out.
Still, it’s occurring to me I did have a sort of reunion this week. On Sunday my extended family got together for a homemade holiday we call Lucky Lilacs. My great-grandfather started Lucky Lilacs when my own mother was a child herself and, without getting into it too much, it has to do with finding lilacs that don’t have four petals (no double lilacs allowed!) and saying magic words at them until a magic hiding place is revealed. It’s an overly complicated treasure hunt that all of us look forward to, and it’s the first opportunity we’ve had to join together in a long time.
I hadn’t seen the whole handful of cousins that showed up for years (guess you can’t guess what caused that three year hiatus!) and so it was almost like a high school reunion: figuring out who belongs to who, remembering which brother is named what, meeting new babies, lining up with cousins and taking a picture of how old we’ve all gotten. It was good to see everyone, and it felt right to be back in the midst of a tradition that has never changed, no matter what mess the world manages to get itself into.
The truth is, I’m one of the youngest of the cousins, and was always a little behind everyone else. When I was little, I was always too small for night-games (until I was old enough and they stopped playing), always tagging along on backpacking trips (and having my pack carried when I was crying at the end). Once I got older I was very often in the corner, traditional book in hand, while my older cousins began raising their own children. Still, despite being slightly outside the whole mess of growing up, despite being slightly removed from the time when we used to be one and the same, there’s still something in coming back for a reunion with these people that belong to the same traditions I do. There’s something meaningful in watching the youngest baby of the bunch look into a lilac, try to eat it, and then be handed a strange sort of prize in return.
When my own son had his turn at magic, Grandma Becky, Lilac Reader Extraordinaire, asked for some magic words but came up against a bit of confusion on his part.
“I don’t know any magic….” he mumbled.
“You don’t believe in magic?” she interrupted, suitably affronted at his lack of preparation and belief.
Replied Spencer, “I just don’t know any magic words.”
And so she taught him some: Hocus, Pocus. Higgledy, Piggledy. Kalamazoo. She taught him words, and looked in his lilac, and told him where he’d find his prize. It was the same thing that’s happened to all of us. And it was his turn, this time.
So the truth is, I’m forgetting things lately. And—most definitely on the writing side—I’m waiting for new things to begin. But I’m remembering old things too, while I standing here waiting. And some of those memories are magic. So I guess I’ll go ahead and change lanes, and hope I don’t hear a crash.
Jamie