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Joyce Kiefer |
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 Joyce and her grade school classmates re-enact a baptism in a class exercise. That's young Joyce Flores (Kiefer) at far left and Kieran McCormick (read about him in the column) at the far right. |
A grade school reunion?
Try it; you'll love it!
of TheColumnists.com
School reunions: You love them or you think they’re a past come back to bite. Or you decide you’ve moved on and ignore Classmates.com and clever flyers for the next get-together.
High school reunions are part of our culture like the Senior Prom. Some people live for them. They’re Laverne and Shirley all their lives. Others don’t want to revive the adolescent self that lurks within. College reunions are often fragmented–a fraternity or sorority, a team, a group that formed their friendships around a major or an organization. The adult of later years was already in bud when everyone first met.
But what about grade school reunions? Does anyone care to revisit those who remember them for not making it to the bathroom in time, for never knowing the answers or knowing all of them, for having rabbit-like teeth? Who wants to bring their inner child to a party?
I did. St. Matthew’s School in San Mateo, California, threw a 75th anniversary weekend and I decided to come. After all, I was class president in the Third Grade. My nine years (including kindergarten) during the ‘40’s and early ‘50’s were among the best in my life. We had mostly the same 50 kids in our class for all eight grades. We didn’t have to like each other to feel a sense of kinship under the rule of one nun. Every year our teacher said we were a noisy, restless bunch, but bright.
The Sisters of the Holy Cross who ran St. Matt comes from the same order as the brothers who ran Notre Dame University. They could be stern and fearsome, but they also taught with humor and enthusiasm.
As their students we learned phonics by going to the blackboard and framing the sounds with our fingers. We proved our arithmetic answers by casting out nines. We memorized spelling words like naphtha, poultice, and chauffeur. We also memorized the Baltimore catechism and knew that despite the Nazis and the Communists, we would always be children of God. Change was going on–houses went up like mushrooms, in my dad’s words, and Victory gardens were spaded under for flowers – but we remained united by the same basic beliefs in right and wrong.
St. Matthews drew its student body from all classes. Some kids were driven to school by chauffeurs and others took the local bus from the outer reaches of town. A boy in the class ahead of me was the son of a French count and was kidnapped for ransom at age three. The boys wore white shirts, blue sweaters and gray corduroy pants; the girls, white middy blouses and navy blue pleated skirts. The nuns wore stiff white collars and pleated veil holders that framed their faces like halos. They were trained in South Bend and in Ogden, Utah.
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of kindergarten at St. Matthew's School in San Mateo, Calif., wearing her uniform. |
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I skipped the anniversary dinner dance–only two classmates were coming, whom I’d seen recently--and attended the Sunday Mass and lunch on the school campus. The stucco walls and tile roofs of the buildings are as much a part of my memories as the nuns and my classmates. The school looks the same as when I was there.
But other changes have taken place over the past 50 years. The sisters’ convent occupied a mansion belonging to the estate that formed the original property. Now, no more convent and, for the past 15 years, no more nuns. No more wood porch draped with wisteria where the May procession ended up for benediction. No more neighboring estates with crumbling fences and Addams family mansions. Now a huge parish church stretches into the place where we ate lunch under the trees. The old one stood in the center of town.
Mickey, the brother of my classmate Kieran, gave the homily at Mass. He shared the story of the time Kieran told the visiting Sister Superior that he wanted to attend Southern Methodist University when he grew up because Doak Walker played football there. He later repented and became a priest. Two of our classmates became nuns. All three stayed true to their vows.
Mickey concluded his talk by saying that the happiest people are those who became what they were meant to be.
As we turned to say the customary “peace be with you” to the people around us, I shook hands with an Asian girl about 12 in a sweatshirt that read “St. Matthew’s Track and Field.”
I almost said, “You’ve come a long way, Baby.”
But she would never understand a past when her school had an all-white student body and no organized sports for girls. I wish I could have been on her team. I was pretty good at running, especially down the lane that led from the end of my street to the schoolyard a couple of blocks away. Sometimes I heard the first bell as I left my house and made it to school in time to beat the second bell, dropping my binder just once or twice along the way.
After the anniversary Mass, I lined up in the school auditorium for lunch. How many times had we lined up in that same auditorium for plays and fire safety assemblies? The auditorium was almost destroyed in a fire early one morning before school started. My parents woke me up and dragged me to their bedroom window. I watched flames shoot tiles into the air and heard a million sirens. I can’t recall if school was cancelled that morning but I do recall the smell of wet, burnt things. None of the classrooms were destroyed. The fire started in Mr. Carney’s janitor closet.
A gilt scroll still curls around the top of the stage. I used to stare at its leaves and flowers, while waiting for the curtain to rise. Now I stood in line again with the six kids who showed up from my class and with others from the classes around ours. It was fun to learn how some kids conquered their problems. Thanks to the patience of our reading teacher, Nel conquered a severe stutter and went on to sing Mary Martin in a high school musical. Some kids, deep down, remained the same. “Tommy,” who chased the girls into the cloak room to get his hands on them, made a career as an ob-gyn. Mike, who made the romantic rounds of the “popular” girls, married five times.
Once the grownups in the auditorium began to talk and smile, I saw the kids I knew shine through. That was enough for me. Unlike my high school reunion, I didn’t want the details of life stories. Instead, I wanted to recapture the flat perspective I had as a child. I wanted to be at St. Matt’s again on a warm spring day with all the kids, waiting for something good to happen.
©2007 by Joyce Kiefer. The photos are
courtesy of the author. This column first posted May 21, 2007.
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