– ‘How quickly does twenty years go?’
He had been a friendly boy but I doubt I had exchanged a word with him when we were at school together. We were standing with a group of other ex-students in the courtyard where we had all hung out in years 11 and 12.
The reunion was a combined five, ten and twenty-year affair held concurrently with some sort of naming ceremony for the lecture theatre which held many memories for me. There were less than twenty of us from our year there, from 150 students who graduated in 1991, probably in large part because the organisers moved the time backwards by an hour without notifying anyone (I don’t think putting a message on the school’s website counts). They changed the venue as well, though we found each other eventually, wandering to the other end of the school. Among the small number there were some people I had hoped to see again, who all looked much the same they had twenty years ago. A few more wrinkles, and the men weren’t skinny as they had been at eighteen. And of course now most of them had their own children.
– ‘When I found out it would be another boy I went home and cried for a day. Then it was OK.’
It felt odd seeing each other again, but for me I felt ready for the confrontation of it as I hadn’t been ten years before. It had taken me a while to feel that I wanted to have the sort of conversation that starts ‘so what do you do? Do you have kids?’
There were life stories to be heard that I only skimmed the surface of, and we were only a small number. With this disclaimer, my impression was that although many of us were intelligent and talented, there was no-one famous or particularly rich. Some were on their second or third significant relationship, divorces among them.
– ‘Marriage and same-sex relationship with kids: not so successful (I’m not talking about the kids). Heterosexual de facto: so far a winner.’
Some had had children ten years before, but most had only started recently, and were deeply embedded in their domestic lives, either caring for children full-time or engaged in some combination of caring and working. Some had lost a parent, and a couple of us we heard had not made it themselves, dying young from suicide.
A reunion like this is challenging. It is a time of reflection. You hear about the lives of others and you compare their lives with yours. The other thing that a school reunion brings is the opportunity to reflect on your education and your time at the school. It felt like it had taken me twenty years to process the experience of being at school into some sort of a coherent assessment of what I thought of it.
On the upside, I had received a good education, I had done alright, I had enjoyed it, I had made friends that I still counted as among my closest. The school introduced me to the pleasure of participating in concerts and musicals which has been one of the most invigorating experiences I’ve had. It nurtured a sense of social justice and let in mischief and fun. It encouraged us all to be physically active – definitely an important thing in this age of soaring levels of overweight and obesity. Some exceptional teachers had influenced how I saw the world, encouraging us to live for today rather than putting everything off until goals like financial security had been reached. I took up this advice quite consciously when we decided to travel and live in Europe for six months. In all, I think you could say the school was nurturing and inspiring.
On the downside, the school is a private one and I would prefer to support public schools. It was, and still seems quite homogenous ethnically, which doesn’t reflect our society. It was very routine-driven which I thought, and still think, can be stifling. And at the time it was streamed, which I think is destructive of the self-esteem of those at the bottom and promotes a feeling of superiority which is unwarranted in those at the top.
Rhea and Lara are enrolled to attend my old high-school, but we won’t need to decide whether they actually do for another ten years or so. At that point I’ll have a closer look to see what sort of a school it is: what sort of principal, what sort of teachers. By then it will have been thirty years since I graduated. By then I think I’ll have the perspective and distance to see and judge it against the best interests and needs of each of my two.
