"Reunions"

This past weekend, I flew to La Grange, Illinois for my high school class reunion.  My hometown suburb outside Chicago.

Just in time for the Autumn trees, blanketing over so many of our hometown’s picturesque streets -- on just a perfect weekend.  So many trees had started to turn – evolving into a banquet of colors.

Back to my class reunion…

I’m not fessing up which one it was.  Let’s just say on the day we graduated, Tom Brady, Elon Musk, and Beyonce weren’t even born yet.

Our high school is a huge public high school smack in the heart of town.  LTHS. Absolutely spectacular.  6,000 kids in our school back in those days.  A whopping 1,520 in my graduating class.

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For that two-night class reunion, I had no expectations.  I figured I’d run into a bunch of old high school buddies and yuck it up.  We sure did that -- and I couldn’t have possibly loved it more.

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My classmates were exceptional. So many extraordinary people making a difference in so many ways — such a testimony to the dreams our high school programs triggered.

But something else happened.  Something unexpected.

It happened every single time, every single time I met with one of my fantastic classmates.  

All I had to do was look in their eyes.

They’d share some moment we had a lifetime ago.  

A guy reminded me of lunchtime sophomore year in the huge cafeteria — packed with a ton of kids.  He took me right back to this loud-mouth, cocky ‘greaser’ -- Richard.

(I made up the name ‘Richard’ for this story. Because the nickname for Richard perfectly described who he was.)

In the packed lunch line in the front of the cafeteria, Richard was standing right behind this mentally challenged kid, Timmy -- who everybody loved.

Richard thought it was a good idea to bully him, mocking the way he talked and his Snoopy-themed metal lunch box in front of everybody in the place.  

Timmy wheeled his metal lunch box in the air like Popeye and clocked him right on the side of the head.

Richard wobbled around like a spinning top and went down for an eight count -- as the whole place gave him a standing ovation. Timmy stood over him, yelling, “How do you like Snoopy now, big Richard?”  

The second he started telling me, I was in that cafeteria.  I was fifteen.  I was there.  I could smell the place.  Hear the place.   

I ran into a fantastic guy, Dave Allen, a long-distance runner back then.  He became a pediatric doctor, and a great dad and father – living in Wisconsin.

He took me back to showing up unannounced as Santa every year at their family’s Christmas Eve party to a house full of their relatives – and how it meant more than I knew to his parents.

Through Dave’s eyes, I was sitting in that big chair in their childhood home – by their big tree in my first second-hand Santa suit.  

An old buddy drew me back to how we’d announce sophomore basketball games for WLTL radio – completely making up different games than the basketball games that were actually going on. That’s nice.  

We were all receptors for each other.  Pulling us back in time.

To who we were.  What we dreamed.  Who we loved.  What we were afraid of. The raw feelings of those forgotten times. 

Here’s the other thing. 

We didn’t talk about our jobs.  Or even our kids or spouses.

Nobody, nobody cared about the size of somebody’s watch, or their car, or their house.

We talked about then.  That’s what we shared.  That’s what bonded us forever.

We didn’t want those two nights to end.

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With a late Sunday afternoon flight, I spent the morning by myself, just driving around the streets blanketed by those October trees – and taking a walk through our town’s stunning woods.

I realized those Autumn trees reminded me a lot of my amazing classmates.

Some trees were still so green.  So healthy.  Still drinking in the sun, dancing in the wind. 

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While some just stepping into their Autumn days.  Just announcing their lovely new colors.  A lovely collage of unique colors anticipating its days ahead. 

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And there were many trees already deep in stunning colors.  Their leaves were getting crisp and gracefully falling, with the wind challenging their tired limbs. 

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All in our class mourned the trees who had already lost all their leaves.  

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I came across the rings of a cut tree.

It reminded me how deep beneath its worn bark, all of our rings harbor our unique journey. 

Our story of dry years, of great growth, of stress and trauma, of health, of unexpected fires, of times of abundance. 

In each other’s eyes at our reunion… we saw the story of our rings.

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Thinking about those four years — we sure were there for each other.

For us guys, literally ‘dodging a bullet’ of being dragged in a war on the other side of the world with a rifle in our arm in a cause we didn’t understand.

We rooted each other on. In sports. In school. In everything.

Kind of like the roots of those Autumn trees that were right under my feet in those woods. Those roots that were talking to each other. Sharing. Giving. Exchanging life-giving nutrients.

We did that for each other in those amazingly four years. 

We lifted each other up.  We were all connected through that magical place, that beautiful, raw moment in our lives.  

Days when we felt, and we tasted, and we explored so many things for the first time — experimenting with the recipe of what would make us us.

I think we all came away from that reunion rekindling a confidence to step just a bit further onto a limb — we had forgotten we even had.

This weekend, those trees humbled me.  Inspired me.  Transported me.

Alone, in the absolute quiet of those woods, I stopped and looked all around me in every direction.

I thought about those Autumn trees. About my school. About my hometown. About that soil beneath my feet.

About all it has afforded me.

How blessed I am. How blessed we all were.

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Yours,
Jimmy Dunne