70TH WOODSTOCK HIGH SCHOOL REUNION
Friday morning I flew on Allegiant from Asheville to Denver to attend my 70th high school reunion which was part of a general Woodstock School reunion. Woodstock School, when I was a boy, was a missionary boarding school in the Himalayas where missionary children from all over South Asia could attend an American school with an American curriculum and American sports.
Today it is an elite international boarding school which draws students from all over Asia including now many upper class Indian students.
But the people at this reunion were almost all grey haired in their 60’s, 70’s, 80’s with a few in their 90’s. We were there because our school years growing up in India was one of the most intense times in our lives and because there is no one else who is aware of this experience with whom we can talk. There is no one else who has any idea what growing up in India and going to a Himalayan boarding school was like. And for those of us in our 80’s and 90’s, there are fewer and fewer of us left who know anything about this part of our lives.
In my case there were three other members of my class there, two of whom have had recent significant heart surgeries to keep them alive. At one discussion I heard members of a class just ahead of mine, the class of ‘52, mine was the class of ‘54, recounting all the members of their class who had died recently.
So for those of us in our 80’s it was a bittersweet gathering, one that may be our last. We are the last leaves on the vine.
Most of us in our 80’s are remembering less and less each year and find it very difficult to remember each other. Even this most intense time in our lives is fading. And, of course, none of us resemble in most ways the children we were. We are increasingly unrecognizable.
And yet, here we are, drawn from great distances to Estes Park, Colorado, at the edge of the Rocky Mountain National Park, and happy to be here.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 