I did some calculations

What I didn’t do: attend my 35th class reunion for my high school, a private college-preparatory school in Ladue, Missouri, a white suburb of St. Louis this past weekend.

What I did not wear: Tiffany Elsa Peretti rose gold Diamonds by the Yard® Drop Earrings; wedding and engagement rings; Rolex watch; Tiffany Link clasp bracelet in 18k rose gold; black Maison Mayle Guipure Lace Wrap Dress from Barney’s NY; black Cosmos Opposition side-buckled heels from Fluevog; Wolford Individual 10 soft control top hose; black Natori Feathers plunge bra; Hanky Panky organic cotton boy shorts, eye-makeup, insincere smile.  

What I did beforehand: I was born in Missouri, a place my parents told me was the midwest, pointedly and often. As an adult, I have discovered that lots of people think Missouri is part of the American South. If you remember your U.S. history, you’ll know that Missouri was admitted to the union as a slave state in 1820; Maine was to be a free state, and this agreement was known as the Missouri Compromise.  Does this make Missouri a southern state? What about that Missouri accent (the one my parents said was so undetectable that middle-Americans were preferred as national television news anchors)? When I went off to college in 1981, I found out that people on the east coast thought I had an accent, and though I did not set out to never live in St. Louis again, I decided over the next ten years, building the argument for myself, one prejudice at a time, acquired on the left coast and east. 

At my 10 year reunion, I told a classmate I was a math teacher & he burst out laughing at me. Recovering, he asked, "What do you really do?"

— Hamsteria d'Relish (@hamsterRelish) October 11, 2016

Who stayed home with me: my husband and youngest son and four houseguests, including some lesbians, which is something I normally wouldn’t tell you, but, for the purposes of this post, it might be relevant.

What happens when the Bacon Provider cooks dinner #ragecook pic.twitter.com/5qR02ipAG7

— Hamsteria d'Relish (@hamsterRelish) October 9, 2016

How I much would I have spent on tickets: dog sitter, at $50 per day; round trip airfare on Delta, out of LaGuardia, $405; town car to LaGuardia $123 each way; hotel, two nights Ritz Carlton, in Clayton (because if I’m going, I’m staying someplace really nice) $659 per night; car rental, Cadillac XTS or similar  $282.00; ticket to party $25. Total? $2351.

my high school has announced that its alumni directory is now available as a smartphone app

— Hamsteria d'Relish (@hamsterRelish) February 29, 2016

Why I stayed home: the last time I went, I got creeped out by a couple of guys from my class. You either understand this, or you don’t (maybe you would like to explain it to me). This time, I got two nicely printed paper invitations in the mail (one included a printed class mailing list with emails and phone numbers), a few prodding emails, and I was tagged along with a bunch of classmates in a Facebook post. I could not bring myself to respond to any of it until a classmate sent a simply worded, direct inquiry. My reply? “I will not be able to make it. Thanks.”

Yes, actually, this is what we wore to graduation

What I did instead: I added up what I would have spent on the reunion. I decided that the money would be better spent on donations to some non-profits doing work I believe in. 

The list below is in alphabetical order, with links.

ACLU

Bellevue/NYU Survivors of Torture

Black Lives Matter

Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence 

Coalition for the Homeless

Environmental Defense Fund

Hillary for America

NARAL

Planned Parenthood

Transgender Law Center

Things that were sad: per federal law, I was unable to contribute to efforts to raise the minimum wage, the PACs for UNITE HERE (the Hotel and Restaurant Workers Union), or the United Auto Workers. You have to be a member to do that. 

Full disclosure: someone I went to high school with called me a "brainwashed Libtard" on my the Facebook wall.

— Hamsteria d'Relish (@hamsterRelish) January 26, 2014

Things that were funny: I enjoyed virtually shopping for this much more than I enjoy shopping in real life.

I am not interested in the high school reunion. I am still not interested when you tell me you're going.

— Hamsteria d'Relish (@hamsterRelish) September 12, 2011

Things that were not funny: there are probably people I went to high school with who will disagree with my politics and have something to say about the organizations I have donated to. If any of them choose to comment about it here or on my Facebook wall, I will increase my donations in increments of 50%, to a maximum of 200% of my original donation. There may be a special bonus for the use of "brainwashed Libtard."

Guys like Trump are why I am not at my high school reunion today.

— Hamsteria d'Relish (@hamsterRelish) October 8, 2016

What it is: I have a few close friends from high school who I do a mediocre job of keeping in contact with. But they know how to reach me. It's easier than ever: email, DM on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, and in the comments section of this blog. Outside of the close friends that I do miss, and would love to see as soon as possible, almost everyone else from high school falls into that category of people I'd hang out with if they reached out to me in a not-creepy way. We could go out to dinner in New York City, and/or maybe take in a show. I’m always up for that. Especially if it’s just like you and me for 90 minutes. Like, you know, a small production, off-Broadway, and not like a two hour and fifteen minute parade of one minute big production number conversations with 90 different people. 

Is a high school reunion a more likely place to have to field a question designed to make me feel bad about myself?

— Hamsteria d'Relish (@hamsterRelish) October 11, 2016

Who should see it: my mother grew up in Clayton, a suburb of St. Louis, went to Clayton High School, and lived there her whole life. She stayed close to a core group of friends, organized and attended reunions, and enjoyed it. If that’s your thing, be like her. Knock yourself out. There are folks who prefer the big, lively spectacle of a Broadway show, too. I'm just finding out that I'm not one of them.

Football in the living room.
Ukulele and German singing in the sun room.
How do we make this afternoon last forever?

— Hamsteria d'Relish (@hamsterRelish) October 9, 2016

What I saw on the way home: I woke up Sunday morning to find that it is suddenly fall in Bedhead Hills. The sky is gray. There are yellow leaves strewn on the green grass. We made breakfast sandwiches with local bacon and local eggs and sourdough english muffins I made from scratch. We got around to watching football and drinking beer. I cooked too many things for dinner, and we watched the "presidential" debate. I'm not interested in arguing with anyone about it. I was plenty creeped-out, though.

I may have made too many dishes #ragecook pic.twitter.com/LDdIpjCZ10

— Hamsteria d'Relish (@hamsterRelish) October 10, 2016

Tracks

Two dogs, one chair

When The Graduate visits, the dogs greet him like they were waiting specifically for him since he was last at the farm. Maybe it was a week and maybe it was a month, but they bark and leap and lick and wiggle. When he is getting ready to leave, they watch him pack, their brows furrowed, their ears drooping down the back of their necks, their bodies curled into impossible knots of worry, their long legs sticking out at strange angles as they both try to be on the same wingback chair. They know.

After a year and a half of living at the farm, the dogs know the property. They know where the fox lives, where the latest deer carcass is, where the best corners for marking their territory are. I usually walk them in the afternoon, when it’s warmest. We walk the perimeter, a just-under-three kilometer route, with a hill. I take leashes, just in case, but generally let my dogs run ahead so they can be dogs.

We got snow last week, and then a day of rain followed by some cold nights.  The snow is no longer fresh, and it has an inch-thick frozen crust. Anywhere we have walked, our old tracks are icy from the compression.

Some days, we go counterclockwise, up the hill and then down, and around and up again. Other days, we go clockwise, down the hill and across and up and then down a ways. If the timing is right, I pick clockwise hoping to catch the beginning of sunset at the top of the hill. Dogs don’t care about sunsets.

Cherry is 12 now, and quite white in the face but still willing and interested in running. The icy snow has made it painful for her starting out some days this week; she seems to tiptoe around, her four feet clenched into teeny tiny paw-fists, her steps short and her back roached. She once stopped to complain, and I told her that her feet would be numb soon enough, and I was right.  She galloped ahead of me once she forgot to be upset about her cold paws. We are only ever out for a half an hour, an hour at the most. I make them wear jackets below 40F, and two layers below 20F. I am aware that she could wear boots, but if I buy dog boots I have to make the dog accept wearing dog boots.  Snow is temporary.

So we tough it out, and Cherry copes, staying on top of the snow and leaving only the tightest little prints in the surface of the unbroken snow.

Captain gallops along, full-throttle, his feet spread out wide. Those paws are webbed, for swimming, and make excellent snowshoes, and he’s so relaxed and happy outdoors that he slaps along the cold snow like it’s the best thing to run on. He loves to run on grass, too, of course, and on pavement, as well. He runs uphill and down, through the woods and over the trails, down the marked paths and the unmarked, diving into the bushes and emerging covered in ticks in all seasons except this one. Sometimes I find thorns stuck in him. He is so happy to be running outside, he just doesn’t care.

I pick my path with care. I stick mostly to the path of the day before, putting my steps not into the footsteps of yesterday because they don’t fit, end to end, or front to back. I’m constantly trying not to fall, looking for the best route, but I trust what I did yesterday; I didn’t fall yesterday, I can walk that path today. I fit my feet in the spaces between my tracks from before. Cherry picks her way around. In the iciest patches she walks behind me, in my footprints. Captain’s footfalls leave holes and after a day are great frozen paw prints, sunk down in the snow, like a marker of his impact. His prints are much bigger than his paws ever appear to be. He runs ahead and around and has to be called back.

The snow should all be gone tomorrow. We are expecting a front with warmer temperatures and lots of rain. There will be mud. Perhaps more snow will come again in another week.

Today, I had a Facebook message from an old friend who’d emailed last week and not heard back. My oldest friends use my oldest email, and I never remember to check it. It is always so full of junk (here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here), I avoid it. If she hadn’t used Facebook, I might not have known for another month. It’s not that I’m hiding; I’m just retracing my steps.

What Sun-Faded Signs Don’t Say

They stood together, angled to enclose me like a pair of blonde parentheses. “We feel like we know how great you’re doing because we see you on Facebook,” said one.

“I look at all your pictures,” said the other.

I wanted to tell them the verb people use for that is “creeping,” as in, “I creep on all your pictures.” I didn’t. I wanted to tell the other one that what people see on Facebook is only the good stuff. Facebook is for graduations, job promotions, new babies, softball tournaments. Facebook is not for rehab, dropping out of school, cancer scares, incompetent bosses. It’s like a roster of all the delicious desserts you’ve gotten to eat, and none of the disappointing frozen dinners.

By way of being honest with old friends, I said, “My constant presence on social media is a reflection of my loneliness and isolation.”

This elicited light laughter. It wasn’t unsympathetic laughter. It was appreciative, and only a little uncomfortable.

My husband and I had come a long way, back from New York, for the wedding of a mutual friend. Since we moved from Seattle, our friend had bought a farm, moved her business there, and rescued a bunch of animals. Now she was getting married, having planned a big wedding, marrying her best friend of a number of years. It was a circus-themed affair, and because of who it was, we weren’t scared away by a circus-themed wedding. Maybe somewhat hesitant, but we were going anyway.

Getting to Vashon Island had included a ferry ride from West Seattle. Our morning had been gobbled up settling a monetary crisis for another friend, but we had thought we had enough time to park, walk on the ferry and be met by the shuttle bus. The Washington State Ferry system is a glorious relic of the days when government was big and had an important role in getting people and goods from place to place. People voted for that, and paid for it with their taxes. The white and green-trimmed ferries are huge, with several decks for cars and trucks and other decks for passengers. There is never enough parking at the smaller, neighborhood ferry terminals, but we followed the lead of other cars parked on the street. Though the neat, small clapboard houses near Fauntleroy Dock look just like the rest of West Seattle, the streets are painted with special striping, and the street signs erupt with multiple placards of all sizes and colors, facing the street in erratic angles. The signs we could see and read described the many times that parking was not allowed, during the week, overnight, but we felt we’d found legal parking for the day.

After a short wait in the small terminal, we bought two $5.20 tickets and walked on. We climbed the stairs to the front of the ferry to spend our short crossing as we knew we had always loved to: in the wind and sun.  It was so much as it had always been, engines thrumming, waves slapping, gulls circling that we had not so much a sense of nostalgia but one of stasis, that Seattle was unchanged and unchanging.

The gloss on our feeling of expertise dulled when we walked off the ferry and saw no shuttles anywhere. We wandered around for a bit, and the Bacon Provider called for a cab. Vashon Island isn’t really the kind of a place with cabs per se. There was just a guy you could call, his name was on the Internet, and he’d send someone to get you. Our driver refused to charge us the agreed-upon $25 fare, accepting only $15, but taking the $20 offered her anyway.

So we were late to the wedding, though we didn’t feel late, but we missed the ceremony in the mossy, wooded grove of giant Douglas firs where the beloved old dog was buried, and missed the entrance of the bride on horseback. So be it. We were greeted first by one old friend, and then another. People were happy to see us, asked after the kids. It was easy and pleasant.

The farm is wooded and lush, presided over by tall firs and carpeted in moss and ferns. There is a trim house and neat barn and the circus-themed decorations were joyous rather than jarring. There were too many people to catch up with and not enough time. I spoke to the pair of blondes, toured the property with another friend. Someone mentioned a small nugget of real gossip, but then explained to me, in a whisper, “Another time, over a beer.” It was as close as I came to a real conversation, and it ended as soon as it started.

After the trapeze act finished, the dancing began with a samba dancer wearing a tiny costume consisting of three green sequins working the room. Then, the whole barn crowd from our Seattle years reassembled outside for a group photo. After the photo, one of the blondes confronted me again, this time with the question, “So do you miss Seattle?”

Looking away I said, “Almost every day.”

“What do you miss the most?” she pressed.

I did not answer her.

Later, when we got off the ferry, our rental car was still there, but it had a parking ticket on it. Apparently one of the illegible, sun-faded signs said, “No Parking Weekends or Holidays.” The ticket was $47. We saw it and both laughed: cheap parking by New York City standards.

Last Monday

At lunch in the city I saw someone across the room who was a pretty good friend of mine in college. I was trapped on the wrong side of a large table, so getting up and saying hello would have been a huge distraction: drawing a lot of attention to me and isolating my kid (who was sitting next to me). I had nearly summoned the energy to do it anyway, when she was joined by a male friend that I did not recognize, and I gave up.  While I ate, she glanced over at me at least once, but either she did not see me or she did not want to see me. It is also possible that she saw me but did not remember me, even though my kid looks like a 14-year-old version of his father, who she also knew.

It is not a wholly new situation; we have all been in it before. You wait for the chatty neighbor to get in his car and drive away so you won’t have to say hello. You ignore the fact that Leon Redbone is struggling to be re-booked at a USAirways counter because you know that celebrities deserve to suffer the humiliations of airline travel undisturbed. You pretend you don’t see your grandpa in Steak 'n Shake because you go there to smoke and it’s your super-secret hideout.

Meanwhile, my husband, sometimes known as the Bacon Provider, got an email at work that day. Now he is a bit of a Medium Cheese in the world, having been on the creation end of a number of gadgety electrical things like the Xbox and tablets, and recently enjoyed a bit of extra media attention owing to his quitting work.

Well, the Medium Cheese got one of those creepy do-you-remember-me-? emails on his work account. Apparently, a woman who went to elementary school with him one year remembered his name and wondered, something like 35 years later, whatever happened to that guy?  The Medium Cheese’s family moved frequently when he was a kid, and his quiet, studious nature had left an impression. “I'm sure you don't remember me, but I've never forgotten you…. I often wondered how you turned out. Imagine my surprise at when I Googled you. I'm so relieved you didn't turn into a serial killer.”  

Apparently there just aren’t that many serial killers around anymore. When they are revealed, there is the usual set of interviews with the neighbors, who always say the vicious murderer was “kind of quiet.” Who doesn’t fit this description? David Lee Roth? 

The Medium Cheese is mostly unperturbed by the creepy email, and I think it bothers me more. This is a guy who will not kill spiders and who once stopped his Mercedes on the 520 bridge to rescue a baby duck.  But then again,  they say Hitler was an animal lover.