Reflection On A Blue Moon-To Be Young Was Very Heaven-To Be Old, Well, To Be Old And Leave It At That

By Frank Jackman

By nature I am not a wide-open man, a man given to much talk about myself except maybe in connection with some event attended, mainly political, or my reaction to some generic human hurt. An event I attended the other night though waylaid me. Made me think about mortality, my own and others (far from the “to be young was very heaven” Wordsworth of our sullen youth when old was pass thirty and mortality non-existent since we planned to live forever). The event strangely enough my wife’s 50^th class reunion. Some kind of unspoken watershed had been reached in mind. My own 50^th class reunion several years before had been absent one person-me. It is a long story but since I had full intended to go I should mention it in passing because it may have been the trigger for a certain melancholia that swept over me like a sudden rainstorm.   

After having left North Adamsville, in somewhat bad odor as far as the family went, to attend college and then the Army, I very seldom returned to the town. The town where I grew up, grew up poor in the Acre working-class poor section where I came of age (after starting out even lower on the totem pole in “the projects” across town) and where I met a bunch of like-situated corner boys (real corner too in front of Salducci’s Pizza Parlor on Main Street. Some of them I am still in contact with and a few like Sam Lowell, Seth Garth, and Si Lannon occasionally write for this publication). Basically I “ignored” the town, sometimes speaking very ill of it to some people. Then my mother, with whom I had a life-long love-hate relationship, passed away several years ago and in sentimental reaction I began to get in touch with various other people I had known in high school or through some endeavor in the town through the marvels of modern social media technology. Sparred with a few, cutting up old touches when we corresponded. Then in late 2013 I got notification that my Class of 1964 was planning a fiftieth-class reunion in the fall of 2014. I had never gone, never cared to go to a reunion previously under some “dust of my shoes” idea, good riddance stuff. This time though I got in touch with the main organizer of the event whom I had known slightly, the nodding slightly in the corridor between classes which constituted the slightly in most high school acquaintances to offer my services organizing the event.          

Bad move, not then but somewhat later when I took responsibility for contacting class members via cellphone, e-mail and Facebook urging them for “old times” sake to show up and see what has happened to fellow classmates. (Of course I “contacted” Sam, Seth, Si here guys who had a more checkered relationship to class reunions having attended some and missed others.) The “bad move” part happened when I contacted one female member, Virgy Green, whom I had had much less than a “slightly” relationship since she was a social butterfly, was in with the “in” crowd and was as we said in those days, maybe now too, “stuck up.” Through e-mailing, then phoning then, meeting we got together since we seemed to have had some experiences post-high school which put us more on the same wavelength. The thing moved along rather nicely except for one small problem. Remember back to why I am in a reflective mood, suffering from melancholia if you like-my wife’s, my third wife but wife nevertheless who gave me hell. No, who told me that if I didn’t stop my platonic flirtation (but almost more believe me) with Virgy we were done. You know the answer but it was a close thing and a thing that stood between us for a while. The other request was that I not attend my 50^th class reunion-granted.

So in a real sense this 50^th class reunion of my wife’s Class of 1968, Saratoga Springs High School in upstate New York wound up being “my” 50^th class reunion as well. It did not start out that way, when she, Lara, to give her a name now, asked me to accompany her I was reluctant to go for the very reason that if I hadn’t gone to any of my own reunions why would I go to hers. But she persuaded me to go and once I committed to going I figured to just play by the numbers, just be there. That day Lara was tense, was apprehensive, was nervous, all the above since she had not seen the bulk of her classmates for between 25 years (the last reunion she attended) and 50 years at graduation. She made me jumpy too although I was committed to be as supportive as possible. It did not help that when we got to the country club ballroom where the event was held that she both began to get cold feet, a horrible feeling that she didn’t know anybody in the crowd and that she had made her own bad move.

In the end, as usually happens at such affairs when things get moving, when the wine flows or whatever we had a great time. The next day was the problem for me, the feeling that despite my acceptance of this reunion as mine and hers that a watershed had been met. That her recognition that this 50^th class reunion of necessity would bring some sorrows for knowledge about fallen to earth classmates finally hit her (the recent death one in particular whom she had known since kindergarten hit her extremely hard). And maybe that was contagious, what struck me hard another way, knowing that unlike let us say a 10^th reunion as the flip side of the Rolling Stones’ song says at a 50^th “time is not on our side.” That maybe as I have mentioned more times than I care to remember is why the flip side of “to be young (in the 1960s) was very heaven” to steal from Wordsworth is nothing to be happy about. And so it goes.