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.