45th college reunion. The fat red book appears in the mail. Like google, the reunion book gives access to former sweeties. I look them up, of course, but no one I so much as kissed has written in. They never do. Maybe they were somehow pre-selected by my libido to not to be interested in the alumni role? Maybe they were just a motley crew.
It’s a pretty straight arrow report. After all, I was Harvard class of 1976. Student radicalism was over. The majority were headed to law, medicine, banking, or academia. The arts were about worldly success.
Still, I’m busy reading about people I never knew or have forgotten. Some love their spouses, some are divorced, most seem to affectionately boast about their children. They have nice summer houses, play tennis, and many attempt to do some kind of conventional good in the world. Some are dead.
There are a few honest and compelling entries—written by women with some practice in self reflection. But these are rare.
One, very surprisingly, encourages us to come to Jesus. He wonders how anyone can survive who “believes” in nihilism. Obviously no philosophy major. I feel like sending him an email saying nihilism is more like a common cold—it afflicts from time to time—rather than a belief. But I have no idea who he is.
Harvard was my last obligation to my family of origin. I was expected to get in, I did, and I graduated in three years. I had a few exceptional professors. There were people I was very fond of at the time. I made a lifetime friend in a CR group. I liked Cambridge, with its funky restaurants and the river. I had a beautiful purple silk dress from the vintage clothing store, Oona’s, on Mass Ave. One the big regrets in my life was that I didn’t buy more there.
High school was more rigorous—Latin, French, trigonometry, AP classes, in a girls’ school I found stultifying. But in retrospect, Harvard was a lot more sexist. I can think of numerous incidents. But the worst was the anthropology professor who announced on the first day that the women students would all score about ten points lower than the men.
Was it worth it? Well, I got a degree that looks nice on my resume, and my father paid my tuition. Other than that, it was my last act of compliance with expectation. A year after graduation I was dying in the Beth Israel Hospital and when I didn’t die I was changed. It took me a few miserable and confused years, but I did began to seek my own path.
Old age and death are right around the corner for the class of ’76. Some seem bemused by it, some grief stricken, some in denial. But they are not my cohort, and never have been. I don’t look to them for wisdom, and yet I have enough sentiment to wish them well.
