Year Twenty

The artists have become investment fund managers. The jocks are consultants and physicians, the princesses are professors and engineers. The geeks are still geeks, having acquired picture-frame families and the easy smiles of the comfortably wealthy.

We all know a reunion is a self-selecting collection of success stories. The folks whose narrative arc veers toward the tragic choose not to tip a glass with their former classmates. Even so, it is surprising how gilded the edges of this group. This was a fine shaving off the top of an already elite population – graduates of a Montgomery County public high school. Perhaps these are not Sidwell or Georgetown Prep elite, and we are not quite captains of industry or cabinet members in training. But these are the federal lawyers, the policy-writers, the decision-makers, the architects (both literally and figuratively) of the public landscape.

I can hear my classmates poo-pooing now at these declarations. Inside each individual life is a series of struggles and unanswered questions. Talk to E, and she will tell you she only manages to work 12 hours a week as a CPA around raising her children. This story was told time and again by the women who were once the girls I knew. Some have pushed on through since becoming mothers, leaving their children in the care of others and their families with little time for togetherness. They pay the price for tenure or executive leadership positions.  But to a (married) woman, their husbands are as successful as they come. With a doctor or a CEO providing the ballast, the ship manages to surge on.

The single women of the group are kickboxers, musicians, art aficionados and world travelers in addition to whatever enviable title they hold. The decision to work, stay home or even to have a family at all occurs at the summit of a very high mountain, where only the select few breathe the rarified air. While uncertainties texture the individual stories, the group, taken as a whole, is a kaleidoscopic spectacle of accomplishment.

Strange to know I am of that culture. Probably strange, too, for the other three or four in the group whose recent stories have included divorce or single parenting or job loss.  Being adrift is a state in which many 30-somethings find themselves, to be sure. But being adrift in this milieu means something different. Our shared school system provided an early dose of overdrive. It kicks in higher than most, ratchets the bar up to the upmost notch, and demands forward motion. The few in the group (yours truly included) whose paths seem more circuitous than certain are still engaged in the pursuit. We find our way back to education, volunteerism, craft, challenge. It is in the water. It is in our blood.

I, for one, believed myself to have danced into a different land. Leaving for Vermont at 16 and meandering through the next decade in the company of farmers, musicians, and activists led me to believe I was fluent in the language of my adopted home. The long chapter set in forests on mountainsides as a camp wife was a heroic attempt to become a naturalized citizen.

In coming back, however, I find I never lost my mother tongue.

At one point, I was chatting with a still-single friend who has found himself on a new, untested career path. “What I notice,” I said, marveling at the assemblage, “is that everyone here seems to be both ambitious and thoughtful about their choices.”

He nodded. “We have to be, don’t we? We have to do something with all the privilege, growing up where we did. It’s important to give back.”

So it is.

Each and every decision is one to seek purpose and make a contribution. It takes great effort to rein in the breathless tendency measure how much good one has made with the opportunity provided.

At the thirty year reunion, the landscape will undoubtedly have shifted yet again. Sadly, a handful of divorces are in the cards, as more than one “happily” married man suggested over a shared a drink. Several careers will bomb and a few more will rise from the ashes. We smile, we hug, we make promises to get together for lunch, we tell each other how outstanding we all look.

Then each of us returns to home to take the private accounting. What will my contribution be? I hold this golden ticket. How will I pay it forward?