In May, I headed off to my 50th high school reunion. Nothing exceptional for an old white guy.  Perhaps a bit of background is in order to explain why this journey was anything other than a sentimental indulgence.  

I was born North of the Mason-Dixon Line and raised there until high school.  My parents were part of a progressive, educated Mennonite community and instilled those humanitarian and religious beliefs in me.  Just as I became a teen ager, my father took a job starting the graduate School of Social Work at the University of Southern Mississippi.  We went from comfortably north of Mason-Dixon to the Piney Woods in the deepest heart of the Deep South.   

My dad, a university professor who started many higher-ed Social Work programs, was, before any of that, a farm kid from Walnut Creek, Ohio.  That farming was a part of his heart and soul.  So after years of making homes in towns and cities, Mom and Dad decided to make home on a little five acre plot in the countryside outside of Hattiesburg, in unincorporated Eatonville.

Which brings me back to my high school reunion.  Given where we lived, I wasn’t slotted into the comfortably urban Hattiesburg High School.  I was headed to North Forrest Attendance Center, in rural Forrest County.   And no, that’s not a misspelling.  Forrest county is not named for some wooded glen.  It’s named for Nathan Bedford Forrest, an adventuring confederate cavalry general and, later, grand wizard of the Klu Klux Klan.  In more recent history, the Attendance Center itself was an uneasy result of the 60’s civil rights movement and court mandated desegregation.  An, ah, interesting place to drop a 13 year old entering the 9th grade who had been raised on a particularly progressive brand of Christian openness and inclusivity.  I found out later that one of my high school crushes resisted all my advances because she thought I was a communist.

Now, I’m comfortably ensconced in Madison, WI chosen partly for politics, but also for four seasons and a little more breathing room between me and my fellow humans. Not exactly a promising set up for a 50th reunion in the Deep South.  But here’s the thing.  I made that almost 1000 mile journey, from North to South, from comfortable affirmations from like minded political cohorts to a something less well aligned with that part of my world view,  from a carefully curated if noisy present day, to a proximity with a past that seemed more than anything shaped by wills and forces beyond my understanding or control. But, I made that journey because I wanted to.

I made that journey because North Forrest Attendance Center shaped me in ways I’m attached to, forged in me something beyond simplistic Us/Them world views.  I wanted to honor that forging.  What’s more, I wanted to honor the people who were involved in it. Teachers like Ms Lott, Ms. Hardy, and Coach Johnson (though I’m sorry, Coach.  I can no longer recite the county seats of all 82 Mississippi counties). And I wanted to honor my classmates both in the class of ’76 and following classes, people who took me in despite my otherness and who became not just classmates but friends.  North Forrest, as I was finding my way to adulthood, became an education in the basic humanity of each of us, beyond the labels and ideologies.  If you want to hear more about that forging, I have an earlier post, Musings on Heritage from a Part-Time Southerner. 

No, not all of us (or maybe any of us) were stellar human beings, kind to all, gracious in all our ways.  We were teen-agers finding our way, creatures of our culture and up-bringing with all the foibles and failings that point in time implies.  But that is and was exactly the point.  I went back to see my friends, not because they’re perfect or I’m perfect, but because we learned about living together on our way to adulthood even if we didn’t always or even often agree on everything, weren’t always unfailing polite and supportive of one another.   

That learning to live with each other as we were was important.  I didn’t head back to bathe in the glory of their approval (voted most likely to succeed!)  and shared experience.  And I don’t expect they’re hankering for that from me either.  I’m still a crazy liberal and I’m guessing several of my classmates are enrolled in the MAGA way.  Yeah, I wish they were more “enlightened” and I’m just guessing they’re wishing the same thing about me.  The 53 of us, the class of ’76, most likely fall pretty broadly across any number of spectrums, political, financial, mental or otherwise.  But this group of people are some of my brothers and sisters, and to paraphrase Robert Frost, family is that place when you have to go there, they have to take you in.  

I went because I believe there is a place beyond our national shouting match and I believe the path to that place is through encounters that acknowledge and, yes, celebrate the sacred and profane humanity of each other.  It is not to absolve us as a collective or us as individuals of the cruelties we are perpetrating, but rather to suggest that to focus solely on those aspects is to reduce the likelihood of something better. And also to suggest that being human, despite all about us that is profane, we are capable of transcendence, of sacredness.  That’s something my mom and dad introduced me to and North Forrest Attendance Center gave me my first tentative adulting exercises in. That’s something I’m deeply attached to, that I want to feed and nurture in my life and others and that I will travel any distance to participate in. 

Go Class of ’76!  Go Eagles.