Back to My Old School

Fourth in a Mini-Series About the Many Sides of High School Life

First, mea culpa. I last posted here in early October, and here we are, already at ghoulish Halloween. Let’s just smile anyway, shall we?

October has flown by, like a witch on a broomstick - except, for the most part, better.

The colors took a while to come in our part of New Hampshire; they crept up on us, in a way, in a slightly subdued fashion; still, during the second half of the month we’ve been relishing the palette of the landscape and often, the cobalt blue skies too.

Good ol’ Autumn: it never fails to bring us beauty and remind us of mortality, all at the same time. Do you ever wonder, at this time of year or maybe at another, whether you’ve stayed essentially the same person, acknowledging some natural outward physical changes, or whether you’ve shifted your identity slightly but perhaps significantly?

Do you ever startle yourself when you walk by a reflecting window and see someone you don’t fully recall being?

Returning, With a Kind of Reckoning

I had one whopper of an example in this department recently. Over Indigenous Peoples’ Weekend, I was back in my hometown on Long Island, for one high school reunion, two book events, and visits with family members and friends. Not surprisingly, I’m still absorbing it all, like one of those big sponges that gets water-logged but doesn’t want to get wrung out yet.

One feature of the weekend was completely unexpected: a Saturday morning tour of my old high school, provided by the current principal.

It may not look all that impressive on the outside, but I guarantee, this is a school that really brings the WOW factor. It was strong when I was there, probably at the height of its student population (my class graduated over 750) and now it may even be stronger. Here’s the current website, if you want some back-up on this claim: https://nhs.northport.k12.ny.us/

Here is Principal Robert Dennis, who generously gave a couple hours of his Saturday to show us every single wing of the school, including — here — where the IB Program lives. We also saw the sparkling Commons, with school pride slogans all around and colorful displays providing announcements, where each grade level gets their own place to congregate. With this place, who needs to languish in Study Hall?

And the music area, which has always housed an award-winning marching band and now also includes a dance studio…

As well as an automotive program where all students can take car maintenance class as an elective without going to any other building…

Over in the Academy of Finance , we saw this display showing what kinds of jobs alumni had gone on to…

And of course the gymnasium, with a gazillion banners..

I know, I’m probably overdoing it here — not even showing you the greenhouse, the food pantry where community members pick up supplies, the childcare center.

Suffice it to say that, much as I like Steely Dan’s classic "My Old School" (go ahead, give it a listen), I can’t go along with the “never going back” part.

And this experience wasn’t even the main Saturday night party, which itself was pretty great. Only a handful of us went on the tour, but we became thunderstruck: both by the high quality of everything we saw NOW and by our own instinct to try to re-grasp what we had and who we actually were THEN, that time long ago, much of it enclosed in fog, when we’d been walking these same hallways — sometimes confident but more often uncertain; trying to grow into our true selves, or maybe putting off accepting our true selves; jostling along, also establishing some strong bonds, with others doing the same.

Gratitude, Above All

At the Saturday evening party, our organizing committee (hats off to them) made a memorial table, with candles, photos, and a large poster including the names of each individual — to compile, this took asking everyone still here —who has moved on from this life.

I’m not showing the whole list, but it’s a long one, with names that leapt out at those of us — we were just under 100 in number there that evening — who looked at it.

Walking back to the parking lot later that evening with Susan, a friend who remembers my dad driving us, in my grandmother’s cream-colored Fury, up to Canada to start a summer program when we were turning 18, I was wearing the medallion with my graduation photo on it. My hairdo’s a little odd, don’t you think? But there’s a certain peace of mind emanating from this moment, too: I must have had people believing in me.

I will try to do the same, for the teenagers I get to work with, now.