Reunions

I was born in 1966 in Long Beach, California. My father worked as a machinist primarily in the aerospace industry and my mother was a bank teller up until the point I was born. Before I was two years old, my dad had bought five and a half acres on Tokay Avenue near Baseline and we moved there living in a tiny farm house. My neighbor to the south was the Beer's Farm and to the north across the street was an egg ranch. Growing up, I lived on a working ranch with an ever changing array of animals. After I started school, my playmates were the animals in my yard or classmates that lived on Citrus and further. I took boiled goose eggs to school for snack time. After school, I would cross the field and play at the Hotyek's house. We'd play board games after school as well as cards and school. Karen was a classmate and her older sisters sometimes were my babysitters. I remember in first grade I had to go to Janice Taylor's house because we had the same lunchbox and picked up the wrong one when leaving school. I remember going to Monique Pinkerton's house in order to participate in BlueJays which was a sort of junior girl scouts troupe for girls.

After my parents were divorced when I was 7, I went to many different schools in Fontana. Juniper, South Tamarind, Jurupa, Fontana Jr. High and Sequoia Jr. High, too. In 1981, at Fontana High School I was a Sophomore as was the rest of my class. 9th grade was still housed at the junior high school level at that time.

I graduated high school in 1984 and our class's biggest worry was what the future had in store for us as a gloomy piece of literature written years before hung in our conscientiousness. The last thing on my mind was if I was ever going to see the people I had gone to high school with as my immediate need was to find my own mental clarity and what my purpose in the world was going to be. The day after I graduated from high school, I was 17 years old and moved miles and miles away from everything that was familiar to me to make a fresh start and gain some perspective on what I had experienced growing up in a broken home with fractured, imperfect people as parents.

By 1994, I had lived in a number of cities, but settled in Tustin, California, near where I was working for an investment bank making a career for myself in the financial industry and a home for my son. It never occurred to me that 45 miles and two counties away my name was on a list as part of a reunion plan because I never received an invitation.

In 2004, I had bought a home, was working at another job in the same industry and my son was a junior in high school when I received the notice that my graduating class was going to reunite. After twenty years, I had not made any effort to stay in contact with anyone from my high school days and my best friend was living in Kansas. I had little interest in seeing classmates that probably barely remembered me.

So now in 2009, I was recruited to participate in the 25th anniversary of my class reunion as a member of the committee. To be continued after the reunion takes place...