Reunions

 

Senior Year 1965-66   Bishop Shanahan High School

I wish I had more photos from those days, but that was way before digital cameras.


On this lovely sunny day, I'm up near West Chester, getting ready to celebrate the 55th reunion of my high school class.  

I still can't believe it.

This morning, I went to Mass at Camilla Hall, the retirement community of the Immaculate Heart Sisters, who taught me all through grade school and high school.  It's so long ago that not many of them are still on this side of eternity.  Nevertheless, I did get to see Sister Saint Elizabeth, who taught me piano in grade school, and Sister Regina Assumpta, who taught our Glee Club in high school

Had a really long visit and conversation with the latter, who now goes by Sister Mary Lydon.  

I wish I had some photos of the two of them back then, as well as some of the others.

So tonight our class gets together . We were last together in October of 2016 for our fiftieth reunion; just before the election of Donald Trump to the presidency.   Now we are in the first year of  the new president, Joe Biden.   I know that my classmates are very much divided on political lines, for many reasons, and I am praying we leave those conversations outside our celebration.  There's no coming together on this topic.

Here' a poem by Emily Dickinson:

 

"As Summer into Autumn slips

And yet we sooner say

"The Summer" than "the Autumn," lest

We turn the sun away,

 

And almost count it an Affront

The presence to concede

Of one however lovely, not

The one that we have loved --

 

So we evade the charge of Years

On one attempting shy

The Circumvention of the Shaft

Of Life's Declivity."