Would You Bring Your Kids to Your High School Reunion?
by Risa Green (Tales from the Mommy Track)
Twenty years ago, I was president of my class at Upper Dublin High School in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania. At the time, nobody told me that twenty years later - when I would have two children, a husband, an eight month old puppy, a book about to be released and, oh yeah, living in California - I would be responsible for planning our twenty year reunion. Or maybe someone did, but I just don't remember. But here I am, juggling one more ball in the air, picking out menus and sending Facebook messages, trying to convince as many members of the class of 1990 as I can to shell out seventy bucks and come join me for a night with old friends.
It's hard to believe that it's been twenty years. Sometimes it seems like just yesterday that I was applying to college, planning for the prom, hanging out in the parking lot of McDonald's with my friends, throwing parties in my house when my parents were away for the weekend. But more and more, it feels so far away; like all of that happened in another lifetime, maybe one hundred years ago or more.
I've decided that since I'm going to be in a nostalgic mood anyway, I might as well bring the kids and show them around my home town. They've been to Philadelphia with me before, but they've never been to Fort Washington, never seen the house I grew up in, never seen where I went to elementary school, or high school. Since my husband grew up here in Los Angeles, they know all of his markers. But it's important to me that they know mine, too. I hate the idea that they have no sense of place for me, that when I tell them stories about when I was a kid, they have no visual to refer to in their minds.
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Tales from the Mommy Track is a weekly column about the daily life of a part-time working mom. Risa Green is a critically acclaimed author who lives in Los Angeles. Her previous adult novels, Notes from the Underbelly and Tales from the Crib were made into a television series. Her latest novel, The Secret Society of the Pink Crystal Ball, is a Young Adult book that will be released in September, 2010.
