I needed the tags with our senior photos and names until I began to look into individual’s expressions, and then I saw the face beneath the face of what time had rendered. With most of us, that is all that was necessary for the old circles within circles of the tribe of 1970 to fracture, and for the warmth of individuals to emerge, a welcoming, a genuine happiness at speaking with so many with such a shared history. This was a welcoming produced by sicknesses survived, deaths and divorces endured and overcome, by the full lives of children, by grandchildren, by adventures, and by temperaments mostly freed from resentments and the absurd standards of high school popularity. The young do not know the long game, how pain can be eased by the perspectives of time and experience, and how the values of friendship can grow among the survivors of decades of close calls, bad marriages, the deaths of loved ones, the common depredations of aging bodies. Some of those who made it through all those troubles were present at Moselem Springs, still standing, often smiling, happy to be alive.
What I felt at and observed at our Reunion was a good cheer, a wry good humor and sometimes bursts of joy and appreciation, and this too — intimacies that are linked with the unfurling of character over the years. In the quiet conversations well beyond the fantasies and spectacle of nostalgia (of which there was some)*, memory was invoked to establish connections that reached both backwards and forwards. Questions: What did you do after Holy Name? Where did you go? What did you see? What is your life like now? Asking such questions demands that one also answer them, and in those conversations, a spark of contact often occurred that led to a deeper, more powerful current, one that provided light for more than a few hours on a humid August evening.
There are two people I want to mention by name from that evening and tell a bit more of their histories and of kindnesses we never knew.
Sister Patricia Miriam, 88, entered the convent in 1950 when she was 17, and had 5 years of high school experience when she encountered us in 1970. She taught for 53 years.
She told me a story that lays bare her heart. After class one day, a boy who had been among the ones bullied in the class told her, quietly, that he liked poetry. Most boys did not like poetry. He did. She told me this story after she had recited a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins from memory.
Fast forward months to our Baccalaureate. When we were lined up in the hall prior to walking in, she stopped by this young man, someone who had probably never felt at ease among us, handed him a small envelope, and told him he should read it later. In it, as a gift, she had placed three poems she had written for him, for this boy who needed such an expression of consideration more than almost all of us.
Tony Gerlicz had time to speak with Madre, Sister Regina Edwards, who, like Patricia Miriam, taught for decade upon decade, and like Patricia Miriam taught in the US and in Peru, but she may have found her best life after us at the Cristo Rey High School in Philadelphia.** Tony described how she had spent time as a Principal in another school “and hated it”. It took her “away from kids, and mired her in bureaucracy. She wanted no part of it. She wanted kids!” Cristo Rey “fit her like a glove.”
Jim Becker has connections to Cristo Rey. In a conversation he had with John R. McConnell, Jr., the President of Cristo Rey in Philadelphia, McConnell spoke of how teachers at Cristo Rey have to create credibility with the kids they teach and with their parents. At a school like Christo Rey, it is essential. McConnell said that Madre “had instant credibility” with both. Open up the “Our Team” part of the menu. Look at the right hand block of the photo. There she is, hand up and waving, joyous, surrounded by those who love her, still involved in that to which she has given her life.
I keep coming back to them, to Madre and Patricia Miriam, to all those who taught us at Holy Name, but especially to the nuns, who so often acted out of devotion and treated us with kindness. How lucky we were. How lucky we are that they could be with us now.
Let me come back to our class. I am not a romantic about this. There are and have been lots of really smart kids and terrific athletes gathered in one class in more high schools than any of us could ever name. Generalities about any group of 180 people are too often evasive and so inexact as to be useless, but this is true — time is short. We are old enough and bear enough scars to no longer believe the old lie that we have enough time. There was not enough time to talk with even a quarter of those who attended. If there are classmates with whom you’d like to share a breakfast or begin a conversation, make the contact. Send the email. Dial the number. It can be tough to make new friends now, but take the chance. History counts. We share so many points of reference, and now we know all about the long game where most of us have learned the qualities of humility and mercy. Who among us does not yearn for more smiles, more talk, and dear friends? We do not have to wait four more years. Take the chance.
*There were WTF moments, but it seems churlish to dwell on them.
**Take the time to look through the web site. This is a marvelous place.
