She was one of my little sister’s interesting friends. That was the only kind of friend my little sister had: interesting ones. One of them was an aspiring actress. She was also a dancer and possessed a control of her bodily movements that I found Intimidating. Once, while we were talking (about what?) at the top of the stairs in the narrow hallway between the upstairs bedrooms, this friend suddenly folded her body downwards and then began to slink down the steps. I was surprised and amazed and immediately certain that conversation with me certainly (and obviously) didn’t command her attention. And yet she continued to talk with us from a region near our feet, face-down in the amber carpet.
But this was not the same friend. This was a different one, interesting in different ways. I want to say she was a preacher’s kid, but that rings false. Still, it might be true; I don’t remember. Her family didn’t celebrate Christmas– or at least, not much anyways– favoring Valentine’s Day instead. Yes, Valentine’s Day and all it stood for was the Right Holiday for this family and they, according to my sister, made a Big Deal over it. Listening to my sister’s description, I suddenly wondered if this friend’s family wasn’t right after all; maybe Valentine’s Day deserved a little more attention; maybe the romance of the day was just a sliver of what the holiday was intended to be; maybe our focus on Christmas and Easter was All Wrong.
Yes, and it was this Interesting Friend who, in the upstairs hallway bathroom where we were all (for reasons I cannot recall) talking, suddenly proposed that one Can Indeed live life without regrets.
I don’t remember the topic at hand that produced this rather assertive conclusion from a person three or so years my junior and still (it should be noted)in middle school, but suddenly there it was: that sentence, uttered with such Absolute Certainty by someone who (by all measures of confidence) knew Absolutely what she was talking about (despite being So Young) and who, furthermore, had clearer ideas about the values of holidays than I had and had, moreover, certainly given the concept of holidays More Thought than I had ever imagined giving them.
You can go through life without regrets, you know.
Oh, yes, you certainly can.
Yes, yes you can.
(these sentences being, of course, the gist of what she said. I do not here record my responses because I do not remember them clearly, and honestly what reasonable answer could I–blindly willing holiday-celebrator that I was and, also, Not Very Interesting Person that I was (am?)– possibly give?)
(and yet– and these words are also in parentheses because, you realize, they are the thoughts that came after this Very Unsettling and, it must be admitted, more-than-twenty-year-old-conversation, thoughts that came as I wandered away down the hall decidedly Unsettled and Pondering what she had said– I felt almost certain that one would have regrets in one’s lifetime; how could one not? One would have to be Always Entirely Certain of making the Right Decision All Of The Time and is that possible and even if it is can’t one still be sorry and even regretful about the decisions one (sometimes) must make?)
(so thought I in less than straightforward syntax as I made my way through the narrow and short hallway to my room, or downstairs and outside, or downstairs and into the living room or somewhere I don’t remember where I went after the conversation I just remember that we had the conversation and that it has stayed with me for All These Years).
Because, you see, I knew a regret was coming– or a sorrowful Something, at any rate– and that it could not be avoided. I knew it. I absolutely did. And I knew, furthermore, that it Could Not Be Avoided.
I wonder now, some distance from that brief conversation in the upstairs hallway bathroom of the Pittsburgh house, if this Very Interesting Friend of my sister has any regrets? Has she any regrets at all?
I say all of this to say that I did not attend my 20th high school reunion. It was in October of this past year, and it fell– wouldn’t you know?– during our fall break at Trinity School. Bill and I considered it: it would have been relatively easy to make the drive over that four-day weekend, to look up dear friends in Pittsburgh, to go to that reunion and see so many of those faces that I, once upon a time, saw every day. I remember, on our graduation day, that a boy named Vincent– who was (at least) occasionally annoying and one day got beat up (so the rumors went) by some sophomores (when we were freshmen)– said to me, “Have a nice life!” and I said, “No, I don’t want you to say that,” because I thought how sad it was that I would never– hardly ever– see any of them ever again. I thought I would even be sad about never seeing Vincent again, even though now I don’t even remember his last name.
I fully intended to attend my 10th reunion. But I missed it. And after that I fully, fully intended to attend my 20th.
I couldn’t go, you know. I really couldn’t. I was in the middle of The Most Stressful Semester of my life (master’s thesis, full teaching load, curriculum development, full-time mom, yadda yadda), and it Just Didn’t Make Sense to take a four-day break from work to travel and get exhausted rather than work silently at home on my thesis.
Which is what I did.
And how– honestly– can I regret it? Can I regret completing my thesis on time, the learning that came from it, the relief of its being Over, the wise use of my time and careful avoidance of exhaustion? Can I possibly regret missing a party during which I would be scrabbling wildly at the back of my mind for names long-ago forgotten, peering at unknown faces for vestiges of their history, listening to people remind me of the ridiculous things I once said or did or, worse yet, have no recollection of me at all?
But maybe I would have found Vincent over by the coat rack (do they have coat racks at reunions?) and I would have said hello to him and asked him if it was, indeed, true that he got beat up by sophomores during our freshman year? And I would have told him, too, that he told me in June of 1987 to have a nice life. Did he remember saying that? And I would have asked him if he were having a nice life, and I would (perhaps) have told him that yes, yes I am having a nice life, and that I have very few regrets, really. Very, very few. Some, yes. But only a few.
