A recent Press assignment took me to the halls of the high school I graduated from years ago. I had not been back since. Although prone to nostalgia, I was not bowled over by those feelings. But I did, of course, feel something.
My high school career reads like Homer’s Odyssey. In four years I attended, well, four places, although two of those were in the same building. While a student at one Catholic high school, the Diocese of Rockville Centre combined two into one. It may have been the same building, but they were very, very different schools, I assure you. So, I moved on and attended Lynbrook High School, my hometown district, and graduated. Except for kindergarten, it was the only year of public school I attended before college.
And, that, dear readers, is a very separate column.
Lynbrook was so different to me. It was the first time I did not have to wear a uniform, first of all. Suddenly I had to look cool, a skill from which I remained separated by an ocean and a desert. Gone were the tie, blue shirt and blue trousers. I walked in the first day wearing these gray pants with a yellow T-shirt under a grey button-down number that looked like bad po-mo art. On my feet were sneakers, and I did not need a doctor’s note or fear any reprisal. I felt like a clown with this outfit, and for most of the remaining days in the school. I never quite found the round hole to my peg.
In my previous high schools, the cafeterias were enormous rooms. Lynbrook’s is small and placed right near the main entrance, which I thought was kind of weird, like walking into someone’s kitchen from the front door. It was in this room where the herds separated, and at the first table the most popular kids sat. When I saw the tables set up the same way so many years later, I could not help but smile. And then I let the mind wander like it always does. I thought about that year, and I have to admit that I was not gripped by warmth. I was a fish out of water that year and it was difficult.
Before I let it all really sink in though, I noticed some students’ pictures in hanging glass cases.
They were the salutorians and valedictorians of their graduating years, going back to sometime in the mid- or late-1990s, I think. Each one had their name, the college they were going to attend, and a major listed, when chosen.
As the years climbed higher under the smiling faces, most of which were proud and full of real hope and future, my internal calculator did the math. Around me in the cafeteria, the members of the varsity football team were waiting to be called into the auditorium to watch game film of an upcoming opponent. And then my head changed direction, and I realized that I am on the other side of the hill.
These kids in the photos could be mine, mathematically at least. I began to think of my little one, who was at that moment several towns over, sitting in a first-grade classroom and beginning her journey to a building like the one I was in at that moment and had been in so many years before. Maybe one day her smiling face would greet visitors, a beautiful reminder of the excitement of youth and possibility that I now have in my heart, but for her.
It was the first time I really felt that, too. I envisioned her future and perked up at the incredible wonder of life—her life—that was beginning. Every day, she stands in front of a blank canvas and is slowly, carefully beginning to paint little strokes in strange shapes and at new angles.
Much like her father, she’ll most likely never paint in a straight line.
She is now closer to high school than I am—by a long shot. I’d love to see her smiling picture in one of those cases with “Harvard” or “Penn State.” Mostly, I just want to see her smiling. And suddenly, I’m excited for high school again.
More than I ever was for myself.
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