40 year Greenhills class reunion
I’m great for making excuses. I have all kinds, depending on the situation. Your dog’s first birthday? I’d love to, but I just got my kitchen painted and I want to watch the paint dry.
Your grandchild did his first pee in the potty, and the corks are popping at 8pm? Congratulations! Have one on me… but without me, if you know what I mean.
But what happens when an invitation to a 40-year class reunion arrives through the mailbox? Instead of dashing off a ready-made reason for why I’d love to, but couldn’t possibly make it, I sit there, looking at it.
Never mind the date and the time and the RSVP. What hits me is the number…40. Can it really be that long since we hung up our schoolbags and turned into what we were all so desperate to become: Grown-ups? doesn’t lie.
We were the Greenhills class of 1977, launching out into the world on a wave of new opportunities for young women, and we were in a hurry to jump aboard and let life take us to places that our mothers had only dreamed of. And that’s what we did. College and careers and families of our own, they are the milestones that have marked our passage through the last forty years. But as on every journey, there have also been sharp turns and dead ends and stumbles along the way. Days when problems pile up and all you can do is sit down and weep. But the sun rises on a new day, and then the day after that, until one fine morning, forty years later, the reunion call goes out. Like the bell ringing to summon us to class, it is hard to ignore and even harder to find excuses for being absent. But what do I have to say? Will I recognise It must be so. The calendar anyone? What could we possibly have in common? A great deal, actually. We have shared more than just a classroom or a uniform, or even each other’s lunches. We grew up together, and together, we learned the most important of life’s lessons: sharing, playing fair, waiting your turn, telling the truth, sticking by each other, and don’t even think about flirting with another girl’s boyfriend. Woody Allen once quipped that 90% of life is about showing up, and so, with no excuses left to fall back on, I replied, yes. Yes, I’ll be there. To reminisce about our escapades, to share stories of success and heartbreak, and to laugh about the forty-year journey from kneesocks to botox. But most of all, I’ll be there to honour the girls who helped us become the women we are today. Almost everything I needed to know about life, I learned in their company. So, yes, I’ll be there. No excuses. Just count me in.