What I Learned At My 50th High School Reunion

...Continued From yesterday:
      Here we are on our graduation day, the Melrose Academy class of 1969. That's me in the bottom row, sitting second from the right.

    Melrose Academy was a small private girls' school located in the Philadelphia suburb of Elkins Park,

...and run by the Grey Nuns of the Sacred Heart, an order of progressive, socially-conscious nuns out of Buffalo, New York, who taught at Melrose and lived in the   Motherhouse,  the big convent in the background of the above photo.

    In my class there were thirty-eight girls who traveled to school each day from all parts of the city and suburbs.
     Me, I took a daily commuter train from the Somerton station,

...to the Elkins Park station,

...from which I walked the approximate mile from the station to the school with the other Melrose girls who also took the train to school.

      I met up with 18 of my former classmates (see me in the last row, 4th from the right? I distinctly recall that I was having a bad hair day that day, thus the hair band),

...plus several Melrose girls from different graduating classes who came along for fun and a couple of intrepid husbands who also came along, at my 50th high school reunion held at the Jarrettown Hotel in the Philadelphia suburb of Dresher.

         Our class valedictorian                           and                    our salutatorian, then,

...and now.

   The intrepid hubbies who came to the reunion,

...good sports all.

      The Jarrettown Hotel was charming and cozy,

 ...and well-chosen by our classmate who stepped up to organize the reunion (left), and her two helpers (right and below).

    And yet my initial impression of the venue wasn't of the venue itself, but of the happy energy that filled the room,

...probably because of how genuinely happy everyone  seemed to see each other,

...and how instantly everyone fell into animated conversation -  even before we'd had time to take off our coats and put down our purses - though some of us hadn't seen each other in decades,

...or had just met, even.

     At dinner Tom and I ended up sitting with my old high school lunch table mates,

...though I think this arrangement just sort of happened by chance, as we were all looking for a place to sit at the same time.
     In any case, dinner was wonderful, and I'm referring not just to the food, which was indeed very good,

...well, that is to say, Tom  enjoyed his salmon,

...and I my pasta with vegetables,

...and though I didn't ask anyone how the chicken dish was, it, too, looked quite delicious.

    And then there were the desserts.

     But more wonderful even than the food was the conversation at our table.
      We talked about high school, who we were then and who we are now, and the role we thought the former played in the latter. We talked about the Melrose teachers and students, especially the girls in the grades above us, who influenced us and who we admired.
      One of the girls chuckled over the girl crush* she had as a freshman on an upperclassman. Her admission was rather a shock to me, as I, too, once had a  girl crush on an older girl, but I had no idea other girls in the school were girlcrushing. It turned out a number of them were, as I learned before the night was over, when the subject was brought up again while were all standing around in a group after dinner talking and reminiscing about things.  We just didn't have a word for it then, and so it wasn't a concept we could verbalize even to ourselves at the time.
       My own girl crush was on an upperclassman, a popular, personable, smart, athletic girl who was also a gifted singer, actress and class leader. My crush was born one day when this older girl, who I assumed was in general unaware of my existence, said something kind and encouraging to me. I don't even remember what it was she said, only that it made me feel worthwhile and good about myself. Here was a girl who, in my eyes at least, already possessed the star dust of social popularity to spare, and yet in sprinkling some on me increased her own wealth of it.
     I'm sure the girl had no idea of the effect of her words on me and probably soon forgot all about the encounter.
        But here the encounter is, fifty years later, still sitting in my memory bank, where it has gathered the interest of time, experience and, hopefully, wisdom.
       And if the lesson of that older girl's random words of kindness was lost on me at the time, if I was too focused on floundering my way through the volcanic soup of my own teen-age emotions to realize that I, too, possessed the power of a kind word, well, revisiting that memory was a reminder that it's a lesson never to late for the learning. 
         It was a gift spending the day with these girls, who still looked young to me.

*Girl Crush: "A straight girl's crush on another girl, often a celebrity. Is platonic  in nature.  A girl who is girlcrushing must by definition be straight, otherwise it's just a regular crush.  Usually based on veneration at some level."  The Urban Dictionary