NOSTALGIA

By definition, a wistful affection for the past; nostalgia. This may not be the best title but the perfect word escapes me right now. I noticed my high school and college year books on the bottom shelf of my book case this morning. I pulled out the high school book for my senior year and began thumbing through the yellowed pages and snap-shot quality photographs. I took Publications that year, was on the yearbook staff so the book pulls up more memories for me than for most of my classmates. There were only four boys in the class. We inherited sports, some of the clubs and whatever else the girls deemed fit. I did all of the free hand art and sketches. The crème de la crème assignment was the class section for our class, the seniors. The girls who got that plum were the power brokers of the class. They threw alphabetical order out the window. Individuals were paired and placed on succeeding pages, guided by the whims of those girls. You could judge your own status by how far back and who you were paired with. They also did interviews to confirm the honors and activities each senior had accumulated in the four years. Each entry closed with, in their own words, future plans and aspirations. 

As I read the summaries, going to college or joining the work force were most common. There were a few leaning toward the military and some simply stated that their plans were still in the making. Then there were a few with no expectations recorded at all. I remember that interview. Diane sat there waiting for me to speak, then asked, “What do you want me to write?” Hell, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. My plans wouldn’t get us into the next day. But I didn’t tell her that, just, “Leave it blank.” The guys who were going to be lawyers ended up being something else. Nobody wanted to be a teacher but many did just that. The military guys had a better grip on their direction than the rest of us. But ready or not, we jumped out in the fray and life took us for a ride.

Common sense, ( I don’t believe in common sense by the way, Albert Einstein said common sense is the list of prejudices we acquire in our youth, and I’ll side with AE) common sense would have us believe that the sum of our lives is determined by the decisions we make. I think we must live as if each decision is crucial and possibly life changing but my life has more finger prints on it than the decisions I made. Sometimes I think I know and sometimes I think I think. I look at those class pages from 1957 and see squeaky clean faces and best intentions. But once out the door we were more like leaves in the wind, blown from fence to fence, settling in heaps. The cottonwood leaf says to the sycamore leaf, “I have decided to wait here with you. If we choose, we can cross the yard and lean against a different fence.” 

I hang out now and then, have lunch or picnic with some of those old classmates. Even though we sprang from the same hatch, life has taken us on different journeys and we trust what life has left us with. So we delight in the good fortune that brings us together and share memories that only we can share. Later in the day as the wind blows us across the yard, we can give credit where we think it’s due and judge, right or wrong, with the perception of confidence. But when we break bread we don’t press petty stuff, like politics, patriotism or religion. We don’t even ask questions that might take us there. Life is pretty good. Someday, not too soon, I’ll pull the book out and think about it again.