JUNE 7, SATURDAY (AND 8TH)

WOODSTOCK SCHOOL OLD STUDENTS REUNION

Saturday morning I again shifted, not so much in space as in time. Woodstock School, the Himalayan North Indian boarding school that I attended through elementary and high school, has a USA reunion every year in some part of the United States. I attended the reuion last year in Estes Park, Colorado and had a great time with four of my classmates of the class of 1954 and their wives. It was great fun reminiscing.

This year no one from my class or the two classes above and the three classes below attended. The only people I knew at all were people that I had gotten to know slightly at previous reunions. There was one person, three years older than me, a Burmese student, Kyaw Win, who was there, on the program to speak. I was a relic, a presence from the past, and for the first time in my life, even though I have been outliving friends for awhile, I felt disconnected and really, really old, out of it. The class of 1959, five years behind me had about a dozen members there. They selected a dining table and sat around it smiling, and told stories about each other. They let me sit with them one time. Another time I sat with the class of 1974, twenty years younger, but the second time I tried to join them I was told that there wasn’t room at their table. They weren’t excluding me, they just were only interested in each other.

On the program there was a report on Woodstock School today with a $20,000 annual tuition and fees. I wasn’t aware of any tuition or fees during my time at Woodstock. For missionary children it was free. There are many fewer American students enrolled now, with students coming from all over the world, a very interesting mix, as there was in my day. The activities all sounded marvelous, so many interesting activities that there didn’t seem to be time for classes. Woodstock School is still a marvelous place, just different, and certainly up to date with classes some of the year even being conducted remotely through Zoom. This contributed a little to my feeling like a relic of a different time with the world passing me by. But of course that is true of any person in their 80’s, anywhere. The world has turned upside down in our lifetime. We can go back through reunions, but otherwise the world that we experienced has been transformed. I think this is central to the polarization that is happening everywhere today. Our identities are challenged by a changing world. We can either let go and accept the unknown future in which we are relics or try to hang on to a past that is gone.

In any case, I am glad that I drove the 40 miles to Lake Junaluska where the reunion was held and faced being a relic among friends for a couple of days.

JUNE 8, SUNDAY

VANISHED

I wrote this post on Pages, posted it on WordPress, and now it has mysteriously vanished from both. I can’t find any record of it. I didn’t notice this until Philip McEldowney commented that it was missing.

This is probably an indication of how everything I have written is evanescent, soon to vanish, the process that is happening even as I write here. Like everything that I have experienced, everything that I have done, as with everyone, it is here briefly and then, as with a butterfly sailing past, gone. It has just happening quicker than I expected.

I can write the record of the day again, but why? The first time I wrote it I enjoyed the process of writing, of seeing words appear on the page. That is the only reason for writing these posts in the first place, the process of writing makes me feel alive. But the process of sharing, whether anyone reads what I write or not, also makes me feel alive. That is true of the chatter that I hear all around me in Zadie’s or Zuma’s or anywhere there are people. Talking makes us feel alive and talking is sharing, the pleasure of being listened to. All I am doing is talking to myself, in this case at 4 in the morning, unable to sleep.

So I’ll see if summarizing what I wrote brings me to life again as it did the first time.

Sunday morning I was invited, along with Susie and Todd, to the Sunday brunch of a group of young (to me) Marshall friends who gather together in one apartment or another to talk. This morning the group was hosted by Amy and Ethan in their third floor, three bedroom apartment, the apartment that the developer, Pete Whitlock and his wife were going to live in before they decided to live across the river.

The duck tacos and crispy balls of duck skin were delicious. There were a variety of drinks and all kinds of salads.

The entire group was in their 50’s and 60’s. The conversation was bright and filled with the laughter of people living in the present and the future, a shift from yesterday at the reunion when we were living in a dimly remembered distant past. We talked about travel and I, feeling like a visitor from the past, was even invited to join in. The brunch was great fun.

And then I pulled myself away and drove 40 miles to Lake Junaluska in time for a concert by the Trillium trio, led by piano playing Robert Bonham, Woodstock class of 1959.

A group of us from the reunion took a boat ride around Lake Junaluska and heard about how the Methodists had turned this into their sacred space.

Then at dinner I sat by the spouse of a Woodstock graduate, who hadn’t been to Woodstock and was not caught in our Woodstock past. When he heard that I had been to France, he took me into his past and told me about his visits to Normandy, D Day, June 7, on his mind since it was a day earlier, and told me about the history of D Day. I was a willing listener, caught again in the past myself. And then I drove back to Marshall through the brilliant yellow green Appalachian mountains and returned to the present.

OK, it was pleasant to write about the day again. If this vanishes, I assume the third time will be just as stimulating to me as I enjoy talking to myself.