Marching to Praetoria

Seriously bummed. It's the first of March, and I didn't get my payment in for the 30th High School Reunion bash (due 02/28), so it looks like we probably won't be going.

Still can't figure out why everyone wanted it at the end of April when all the kids are still in school. Would've been a royal pain in the tookus to pull the kids out of school and drive twelve hours down to Virginia just so I could hang out with a bunch of people I haven't seen for thirty years (although I've enjoyed hearing from them via Facebook in the last couple) and then turn around and drive back again so the kids wouldn't miss too much school.

But it sounded like the party was going to be a bit too much anyway. I'm not into the blitz-style of partying, where one dresses up nice and then goes to a fancy club or hall where people drink too much, laugh too loud, say all the wrong things at the wrong time (because their synapses are Firing Under the Influence) and have to scream at one another because the music is turned up way too loud, and, based on the comments I was reading, that seemed to be the expectation.

My kind of party is where ten or twelve of my best-remembered friends from High School get together at someone's house, eat a gourmet meal, then sit down and catch up on each other's lives, talk about the serious stuff, the life-goals, the joys and disappointments we've experienced thus far, reminisce about the things that brought us together in the first place. We sit up far too late into the evening (or early morning), but when we leave, we all have clear heads and renewed relationships because we didn't waste time trying to entertain each other with gyrations on the dance floor and disco balls and bad 80s music and sound bites about how successful we have become.

And if I'm going to trouble myself to travel all the way to the East Coast, it won't be to spend a single day hanging out with old high school friends, even though I love them dearly; it will also be to spend many days showing my family the people and places which were a part of my younger life - not that my life is important, but the people and places in my life were important in and of themselves. I want them to see Boston and New York City and Long Island and Montauk Point and Port Jefferson; I want them to see Washington, D.C., and the Smithsonian and the Air & Space Museum and Baltimore and Richmond and Petersburg and The Crater and Appomattox Courthouse and Williamsburg and Virginia Beach and Kitty Hawk and Nag's Head and Hatteras. And I want to take them to Huntsville where their goofy cousins live, and drop in on the Space museum there. And I want to take them down to Florida to see the Cape and Disney (if we can ever afford it) and the Atlantic and Gulf shores.

And at the end of the tour, I want them to be able to say that they've seen the East Coast, that they have dipped their toes into the eastern waters and met the people with their strange accents and hospitable ways, that they have sampled the foods from north to south, that they have seen the lights of the cities and the night skies of the country lanes, that they have seen the history and the beauty of this country into which they were blessed enough to be born; and then I shall rest easy because yet another portion of their education has been completed.

An introduction.

It's all I can do at this point, just to introduce them to little things here and there. In some ways, it is impossible to teach these things. We don't have near the capacity to learn from other people's experiences as we have the ability to learn from our own. And before they leave my house and go off into the great unknown which is their future, I'd like to give them an opportunity to have their own experience; as much of a taste, an introduction, into the world as I can, even if it consists of no more than a few hours wandering through well-traveled roads, through dusty corridors of museums, along the lanes and sidewalks of cities whose name and fame precede them, and through the memories of people with whom they come in contact.

That is my Grand Scheme. It's importance grows every day as I look at my children and realize anew that they are getting older by the minute, closer and closer to the day when they finally leave my house, when they will move beyond my direct sphere of influence, when the world and their friends and their new experiences will be a larger factor in their continuing education than I. By that time, I hope to have given them as much knowledge and wisdom and experience and guidance as will keep them on the right path, contented with their circumstance and inspired to be their best, never looking back to what might have been, but always looking forward to what ought to be.

Meanwhile, I'm still bummed that we won't be going to the reunion. I was so looking forward to seeing who still has their hair.