The only high school reunion I would ever even consider:
Diane Hidy and me, Mercer Island High School Class of 1976 and 1975.
A couple of years ago I wrote about reading Diane's name in a newspaper column. Eventually, inevitably, she found it and contacted me. After several months of emailing we finally found mutual free time and spent a couple of hours together this afternoon. It was a blast.
I brought the 1975 yearbook. She remembered so many more people than I did. This appalled her no end since she hadn't realized these names and faces were so indelibly burned into her memories. I told her the gossip I'd heard, all of it ten years or more out of date. I found it comforting that we both remembered the same people being horrid, sweet, creepy, etc., and I was especially amused by how much dirt she had on the teachers to whom I had paid virtually no attention during my time at MIHS.
I filled her in on what I'd been doing since then, and why I'd turned away from music, and how I was introducing it back into my life. We talked about life after high school. She knew some of the musicians I knew at the University of Washington because she and they went on to Juilliard while I quit college and got involved in rock and roll. We sat at Park Chow eating and talking while it rained, flipping through the yearbook and trying to remember what we were like twenty-seven years ago when we last met. I don't think we really know any more. Both of us have worked hard to leave that behind. Neither of us have any contact with anyone else from high school, and we both meant for it to be that way.
I met her husband (who took the photo above) and her two children. I thought her house was a warm, lively, friendly place with the grand piano in the living room and kids' toys everywhere. She gave me two CDs of her performing. "Two pounds!" she said cheerfully, making me laugh. I'd told her about my reward system for losing weight. I'm very pleased to have them, both because she's the artist and because it's classical music that I haven't heard in a long, long time. In college my friends were virtually all either pianists or violinists, so that's the repertoire outside choral music that I know best. It will be a great pleasure to hear some of it again.
We're going to get together as soon as the weather clears up and go for a walk in Golden Gate Park. Diane is an intelligent, interesting, fun person and I would like to hear more about her life. I won't chatter so much next time; I'm sure we'll talk far less about the past. But today I couldn't help myself. It was an unusual opportunity for both of us, I think. I am grateful for the chance to talk to someone who was a teenager when and where I was, who felt like I did about where we grew up, and who has always thought of me as a musician.
There are no words for how much that last part means to me.
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