Reunion

A dreary Saturday. All of us still a bit under the weather and the weather under and beneath and around all of us. In Northfield the banks of the Cannon River haven't held. The water has overflowed, crept into basements and fields, over the riverside sidewalks and the parks at the river's edge. E-mails for emergency sandbagging attempts. The radio station shut down after Excel Energy cut off their power. I took you downtown yesterday morning and by the time we headed for home all the downtown streets across the river had been closed. I brought you down to the edge and we watched the water. Dark and fast, foam cutting slivers of briny white into the churning fabric. Fast and with purpose, a different kind of river. The wind whipping around us, raising the fine blond hairs around your face.

Before watching the river we sat on a couch at Blue Monday. I fed you bits of blueberry scone and we listened to a man from Greece talk about following his dream to build Nascar auto parts. His one-year-old had open heart surgery. She was an unplanned pregnancy but in Greece, "we don't terminate" he explained. "I mean, you know, the babies." He showed pictures of his family on his cell phone.

Then we watched the river. And then we drove home. And then we drove to Minneapolis. You ate mountains of macaroni and cheese for dinner. I tried on different shirts and said things like "does this one make me look too dull?" "does this one make me look like I'm trying too hard?" "does this one suggest a more zesty personality?" "does this one suggest too much boob?" Ricki and Peter played along. Your father sat in the armchair in the sun room, reading a paper and rolling his eyes.

Then we left you and went uptown and ate a grand amount of delicious Thai food. Daddy had a beer and I had a pomegranate martini that smelled exactly like the cough syrup we've been squirting into the back of your throat for the last three days.

And then we went to my ten year college reunion. And what a homogeneous bunch the class of 2000 truly is. White and upper middle class. And I was so torn, Thiz, between wanting to look like I belonged and desperately wanting to look markedly different. Which sadly means that maybe my 31-year-old self is not so different than my 21-year-old self.

Or maybe I'm not being fair. One classmate lost a leg to the Light Rail. Steffan lost the use of his left arm to a stroke. He put down the beer in his right hand to give me a hug. Nikki used to design sets but is now training to become a landscape architect. Nick was almost unrecognizable; he's lost so much weight that a sharper, far more distinct face has emerged. In the center of the room were huge plates with thousands of pieces of cubed cheese. The side of the room with the bar on it was considerably more crowded than the side with tables.

I cried a little in the car on the way home. Mostly grief for everything that I thought I was going to accomplish by now--and haven't. And maybe won't ever accomplish. They give awards and a full page spread in our college magazine for the man and woman who have accomplished the most in these last ten years. I won't lie, of course I wanted to be that woman, I wanted a glossy photo of my face framed by a white collar, not a single slick hair out of place. But I know the man who won the award--he is teaching physics at Oxford. He has a beautiful wife. And he was drunk beyond belief. The kind of drunk you get when something crucial is missing. I know because I was that way at the five year reunion.

Which isn't to say I wasn't drunk this year. But it was a different kind of drunk. A ten year reunion is really just an excuse to grieve a little for the person you didn't become.

But there is nothing missing from my life. Sometimes I don't get around to everything that's important. Sometimes things are out of balance. But there are no dangerous and dark absences, the kind that can pull you into affairs or suicide or Kool-Aid cults.

And I have you and Daddy to thank for that, Thiz. You fill up my life with presence--the true, difficult, maddening, vulnerable, hilarious kind of presence. I haven't accomplished what I thought I would, but---well, that just means the write-up for the 25-year reunion will be that much more fantastic.