Thoughts on broken things

Yeah, I'm a slacker and I haven't been posting. It has been a hellish couple of weeks since coming back from reunion, and the post about what I got from reunion isn't going to materialize since most of it got dashed on the rocks as soon as I came back. Sometimes we realize things too late, and there isn't much one can do but watch the train pass on by.

This post is a placeholder for a longer piece about broken things. Broken bones, broken relationships, broken dreams and the healing process that sometimes needs to happen without other broken parts and pieces.

In the meantime, I leave you the blues. So wish I'd seen this show.

More later. Now sleep.

Halls of ivy, paths of beauty...

...we drink rum and stay outside. (It fits to the tune, y'all.)

This should come as no surprise to those who knew the miscreants of the Middlebury Class of 1995, or at least a certain subset of that class. As we lined up for the parade, Jim Rodda was passing around the rum bottle, and I took a big ol' pull from it right as someone says, "Isn't that President Liebowtiz right over there?" Oh - hi.

And as we processed toward the chapel for the convocational service, most of the Class of 1995 peeled off to stay outside and chat and socialize - all except the one poor sucker who was at the front, and was the sole representative when classes were announced. We had no love of old tradition, but fought like hell against any changes. (One of the deans told some of us outright about changes that they just had to wait until we graduated - we would be gone, they would still be here, and they would win. And they did.)

It is amazing the reversions of returning to reunion for those of us who came without children (those who did come with children remained adults for the duration). Friday night we got lectured by event staff for climbing over the event ropes, attempting to leave the event area with beer, and for climbing over the ropes on our way out. (Yes, we knew where the exit was that time - we just didn't care.)

Saturday night, rather than attend the sanctioned events after dinner, we passed around a bottle of Old Grand-Dad and talked about old times, where we were in our lives, and mourned friends no longer with us.

Later on we got kicked out of the lounge by event staff (since the accomodation plans two of us had made were too far after the Old Grand-Dad, we'd planned to sleep there), and we crashed in the third floor study lounge instead.

The next morning, heading down to the lounge in search of water to stave off the oncoming hangover, there were three fraternity brothers passed out in the lounge, with the strong scent of cheap beer in the air. Pretty much the way Hepburn Lounge smelled EVERY Sunday morning I remember.

There is a much longer and philosophical post in the works, with further detail of people and happenings. I did get the reflection I needed, and answered many of the questions I'd been asking about my life and what direction to head in. That will come later.

But this post I will leave with the amazement at how quickly we all fell back in together and how little our basic characters had changed. And waking up Sunday morning, hung over in the third floor study lounge, wrapped in a tablecloth, next to a smokin' hot blonde, means that at least for a time, you can go 'home' again.

Disclosure - any interactions with the aforementioned hot blonde were purely platonic due to both of us being in relationships. I just had to end with that image of resumed debauchery and return to college days.

Heading off to the halls of ivy and paths of beauty

Note - reunion was actually LAST weekend. I thought I had posted this before I left, but I hadn't. Actual reunion post to follow later.

So this weekend is my 15th college reunion. I waited until the last minute before deciding to go, as this would be the first one I've been to. 5th reunion was the weekend my brother got married, and 10th reunion Jess couldn't travel because she was pregnant with Sam (and we'd been through enough issues I wasn't leaving the state while she was told to 'take it easy').

Two years ago I had visions of 15th reunion at Middlebury. I would be there with my beautiful wife, and two amazing children. I would be able to say my wife ran a successful small business, and I myself had just completed my second year of law school. My younger son would enjoy playing in the mountains and by the streams up at Bread Loaf. My older one would enjoy the college atmosphere, and we would go to the seminar with admissions on how the college admissions program worked, looking at technical schools like RIT or MIT that would challenge him. Definitely introduce him to a college friend who was now creative director for a video game company. And at the evening parties, I could introduce Jess to everyone (secretly enjoying the envy of classmates at the brilliant beauty I somehow managed to marry) and just have a wonderful time. A coming out, if you will, of success and being on top of the world.

Yeah...not so much.

On the plus side, I still have all my hair, and am relatively trim. I've aged pretty well. So I have that. But I'm going by myself, with life in a whole lot more of a shambles than I thought it would be at 37. Off to go chat with the lawyers, doctors, and captains of industry - "So, Nick, what are you up to these days?"

To be perfectly honest, I left college with absolutely no plan of what I was going to do. I had applied to a couple of MFA writing programs (rejected by all of them, in hindsight thankfully) but had no real direction. Everything I've had so far in my life I've stumbled into through sheer dumb luck - the blind pig finding truffle after truffle. Eventually the truffles became dirt clods, and now I'm here.

What pushed me over the edge for reunion was an old friend calling me up and telling me that her parents had a timeshare up in the mountains and were really pushing for her to go to reunion. "But I won't know anyone there - I haven't kept in touch, and it even took some digging to find your number. I've gotten old and wrinkly and haven't done anything. I need to know at least one friendly face will be there."

I told her the friend who gave her my phone number also sent me a recent pic, and that she was definitely overexaggerating on the old and wrinkly - still stunning, actually. She laughed at me. "That's you - you would say that."

So I'm going. I'm heading out a day early to spend some time with my mother in eastern Vermont, and possibly try to catch up with some other friends there. And for reunion? It will be good to go back, and try to remember pieces of who I was. Maybe find some direction I didn't have when I left at 22. Find a recharge in remembering good times and reuniting with old friends.

And what am I doing? I'm writing a book. That's a good Middlebury answer.