Ask Wednesday: Do you plan to attend your 50th college class reunion?

Doubts about a class reunion in sestina

By Morris Dean

On this very day next year the Yale Class of 1964's 50th Reunion will begin in New Haven. Its members are of an age now that I wasn't surprised to see a box marked "Deceased" on the response form. When I mentioned this to my wife, she asked me how could I return the form if I was deceased? I told her she could return it, couldn't she? Otherwise, how would they know I've died?
    But when she looked at the form, the box was labeled "Divorced" and positioned under "Marital status."
    I told her if I were divorced I might as well be deceased.
    The cover letter announced there'll be a 50th Reunion Class Book and suggested

topics for your personal essay, up to 500 words in no particular format, due by September 15:

• Basic information about your family and professional career(s)
• What you have learned ("life lessons") since Yale
• What you have done that most defines you; how you want the grandchildren to remember you
• What has given you the most fulfillment
• Hopes for yourself, your family, the world
• What you are doing now, what's ahead

    Then one of my college roommates, who had been asked to wrangle up as many classmates as he could to attend the reunion, emailed me that he'd like to set up a conference call with our former roommates to try to "find a reason in common to revisit the site of our youth—before we can’t remember our youth." Nice touch that last, but is it still before?
    And he added, "I think we might all enjoy a dose of nostalgia at this point."
    Nostalgia? Hmm, I'm not so sure.
    [Questions in italics.]

Which questions will you answer for the book?
Which can I answer? Lessons learned since Yale
in 500 words? How sort true from false?
How keep from warding off the nostalgia
I might want to bathe in for reunion?
I'm glad to see they don't rule out a poem.

So, this is your essay, is it, this poem?
It could be, but I'd tinker for the book.
The book for the 25th reunion
was "Later Life"—now twice late from Yale,
and for the bath doubly much nostalgia,
doubly the challenge to keep true from false.

What's your hang-up about not seeming false?
No, not seeming, but being false, my poem.
That's why I'm not sure about nostalgia,
or saying "most" fulfillment for the book,
or how to estimate what difference Yale
has made me between then and reunion.

Do they ask for that for the reunion?
No, that's correct, they don't—that line was false...
I guess one of the things I learned at Yale
was how to invent lines for a verse poem.
(I don't think this will make it to the book,
even if it's nowhere near nostalgia.)

Come on, show us a little nostalgia....
No, I can't do that...If the reunion
could be to me the same way as the book—
a challenge to avoid taking a false
step, in person, as in writing a poem,
then I could say I might go back to Yale.

You mean next year to the party at Yale?
Yes, if I could overcome nostalgia.
Maybe "maybe" I'm saying in this poem,
maybe I will attend the reunion,
let our Lux et Veritas ward off false,
go in person plus writing in the book.

Or: Bright Yale years call us to reunion,
but their nostalgia feels from here so false
I'll but say "Hi!" by poem in the class book.
_______________
Copyright © 2013 by Morris Dean

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