Reunion. Can it really be called a reunion if nothing held together in the first place?

My actual college experience was disjointed and largely lonely, definitely not a picture of connection that left me forever nostalgic. I remember sobbing in the chapel because I didn't want to be there and felt so alone. It's both hard and easy to understand. Logically, it would be hard to find good friends if I frequently went home on the weekends. I didn't thrive in the party scene, couldn't find my academic home, and breezed through the dining hall because I felt self-conscious scanning the crowd for a seat with all those cliques staring back at me (so it seemed). I briefly had a friend from chemistry class (until he liked me and I didn't like him back like that) and we used to object to the black pants girls. Then I became one of them, in a lame if you can't fight 'em, join 'em move. I had never even worn black until then! At the same time, it's (still) hard for me to understand how it could be so hard to find kindred spirits. I guess their rarity is what makes them so special.

I remember my student telling me a story about getting stung by a dangerous, tropical jellyfish and her father and brother basically saved her life by peeing on her. Apparently the urine sterilized the wound and allowed her to live.

So, I propose P-ing on reunion. To make Preunion. This word better captures my reality. There can't be a reunion where there was no union. But a preunion suggests a forthcoming union. And that sounds more like it, to me. Plus, a little irreverence would do me good.

Attending my preunion was exciting and promising. No pressure, only possibilities. I was there to do some excavation work. To uncover some ruins. To search the archives. To visit the new sprout garden and plant some seeds. To await their fruition.

Attending my reunion was intimidating and disappointing. I still felt incidental. I still got lost when the private school crowd got going about their yachts and summer homes. (never mind the babies and spouses.) I still felt self-conscious about my lack of fashion sense. I still fell prey to guys looking for a good outside with little notice of the inside.

I think of reunion and my heart gets stuck. I trip over ex-boyfriends and lost friends, and like a one-two punch, I fall right down my well-worn why-didn't-I-at-least-apply-to-transfer trap.

I think of preunion and my heart relaxes. There's nothing to see here. Just wait for what comes. Enjoy the trailers. After all, this is just for your entertainment.

It was a preliminary step. I didn't walk away with everything packaged into a pretty party favor tied with a bow (actually, they gave us a kite). But I did begin to wrap and unwrap my heart around the whole college experience. It's not a perfectly integrated free flowing river of love and acceptance. But I'm taking it back, reclaiming it, as a part of me.

I went there. I lived there. I loved there. I cried there.

It felt surprisingly homey to be back, places that were so familiar that it almost felt like I never left. That nook with a beige phone in the chapel basement; the ascent up to the dance studio; that lone room #100 off the foyer that, for the 3rd time, won't leave me alone. It can't be a coincidence that I slept in the very dorm I lived in and most loved with my palatial zen room overlooking the most beautiful part of campus.

I stayed there. I tried there. I slept there. I left there.

One of my old journals surfaced during March Forth and it turns out I'd forgotten a few things. Somebody noticed me. Somebody wonderful who cared and made me really happy. Somebody missed me...a lot. And then I...forgot. I messed up. I missed out. I moved on.

I got stung and apparently I stung, too. Suddenly that  hurts from a fresh lash of regret. What can be done now but try in some weird way to cleanse the wound and salvage some life?

During preunion, I got an unforgettable compliment, one of those "priceless" moments that makes it easier to say... I'm no longer looking for my college to make me. To give me a place to call home or a sense of belonging. To supply me with friends or my identity. It's a part of me, not me, and not even a very big part of me.

I guess the thing about college is when  it happens and how. It's a developmental stage, a transition from childhood to adulthood, of sheltered independence that sends forth some of those first steps. It's an intense time of living in community, amplified by physical proximity, the late night lifestyle, and generous amounts of alcohol.

I'm left with all these memory threads that I'm trying to untangle - the short ones, long ones, knotted ones and double knotted ones - so that kite can actually fly, or at least get a lift-off. Maybe someday I'll grasp these loose threads and attach them to that kite and...let it all fly away.

Redemption is reclaiming a memory. It is remembering what clearly was not good, not right, and yet acknowledging, where we can, that what was our breaking may actually have become our making.

Between March Forth and reunion, I have a rather large vault of memories displayed in front of me.

Where you find yourself now has most likely come out of the best of times and worst of times in your own life.  It is a huge grace to reclaim memories which may have been locked up in old closets of your memory, to salvage what otherwise might be lost on us.  The gift of redemption draws from the treasury of our own memories... (The Gift of Memory by Br. Curtis Almquist)

I can be sure that nobody ever has, or ever will, like me for my money, but looking at this treasury, I feel quite rich.