High School Reunion

Husband and Fio are in Waco for her high school reunion.  It's interesting, exciting, and weird.  People grow up to be different than they were as teenagers--their appearances change with age, weight gain and loss, and hair colors and styles, while their personalities and attitudes have been altered by their varying experiences.

Fio is attending the reunion not only because she is curious about her former classmates, but also because she might pick up some good story ideas.  Hmm--light bulb goes on--maybe she could deduct the registration fee as a business expense.

Three Excepts from WHERE THE HEART LEADS

They’d met when they were sixteen.  All the high school students from the Bosque Bend end of the county had been transferred over to the newly-constructed consolidated school, and it had been a hard adjustment for Rafe, especially since he’d had the flu and was starting the semester a week late.  His first day back, he’d been standing in the center of the front hall and trying to make sense out of the list the office secretary had given him when a beautiful girl smiled at him and asked if she could help.  

The girl had guided him to his history classroom, then hurried off down the hall with a smile and wave of her hand.  He saw her later that day in English.  She’d smiled at him again and he knew he was in love.  
*****
The Christmas season went into full swing the next day.  Cars sprouted felt deer horns out their windows and cheerful plastic wreaths on their grills, cedars along the road wound themselves with tinsel garlands, Santa Clauses sat on rooftops, reindeer pranced on parched lawns, and  a Salvation Army bell-ringer had stationed himself in front of WalMart.  

*****

“Moira, Suh-weetie Pie, I’m so, so sorry, but I won’t be able to make it to—uh—Texas

this trip.”

An airplane engine roared in the background, and Moira could hear a flight attendant instructing passengers on how to use the drop-down oxygen mask.

“You understand.  I’ve been talking to Covergirl about representing their line of skin products for—um—older women.  I’ve let my hair go white—it’s the new blonde, you know, and makes my skin looks gorgeous”  Her voice dropped to a whisper.  “Hold on a minute.  There’s a hatchet-faced stewardess looking my way.  I’ll have to put you down and get a Vogue to hide behind.”

The Perfect Dress

The anger was always seething beneath the surface, but Mother's deepest insides were mushy sweet.

The summer before Fiorella entered high school, while the family was visiting relatives "up North," Fiorella spotted the perfect dress in an Akron department store.  It was a brown and orange plaid with a straight skirt, and it would assure everyone who saw her the first day of school that she was a person of consequence.

But it was expensive--probably over a hundred dollars in today's currency--so Fio had to walk away.  Late that night, Fiorella heard Mother, on the other other side of the partition that separated her parents' bed from the anteroom that housed cots for Fio and her brother, talking with Dad about the dress, explaining its importance to Fiorella.

Despite Dad 's concern about trip finances, he relented, and Fio walked proud and confident into Waco High School that fall.

Thank you, Mother.  You understood.

The Alien

Having attended high school, Fiorella is familiar with female social structures--which have been repeated in every other women's group with which she has been associated.  She used to try to participate, to establish or align herself.  Now she just sits back and watches.  And takes notes.

Reunion Nerves

Fiorella needs to pick up a nice outfit for her upcoming high school reunion--something that says she's chic, semi-mature, and successful; something an up-and-coming author would wear; something that will make people want to buy her book when it comes out. Maybe a signboard would do.

Fio isn't sure why she's going to the reunion anyway.  Sure, it's nice to talk with old high school buddies, but our lives have all taken different paths, and the conversations will tend to be short.  And we have to be careful not to tread on each other's political toes. And Husband, who is not gregarious, won't know a soul there.

But there's a double mission going on here.  We're also going to stop at the cemetery and lay flowers on Fio's parents' graves.  And that's worth the whole trip.