9 CLASS REUNIONS AND SPANX

This past weekend I went to my twenty-fifth high school reunion. I experimented with how many pair of Spanx I could realistically wear without turning blue. Sitting and breathing at the same time is not a requirement at that function per se. It’s a lot easier to catch up while you are standing, so I had to be extra-Spanxed that night. And if my tight forehead and eyebrow wax didn’t impress my old high school friends, then I should have just stayed home.

Who am I kidding here? Thanks to social media, there are no surprises at class reunions anymore. By the time you arrive, everyone is well aware of the valedictorian who turned into a full-fledged cat lady after her brief and unsuccessful run on Jeopardy! in ’04. Bless. You have already seen pics of the former baseball player who is now fat and bald and divorced two times over. You already know who made it out of that town and who stayed to cheer on the high school football team for life. You know where the hoods and preps ended up. The highlight of all class reunions, of course, is to observe (and judge) those who have not aged so gracefully.

At my high school, all of the classes from previous decades join together for the class reunion opening ceremony. Everyone shows up in the same tired, wrinkled, and worn-out condition. We have no one to impress. Except that one girl from the class of 1984, the former cheerleader, who has worked so hard on her body that she can’t wait for this shining moment. She gave herself away when she fell up the bleacher stairs during the opening celebration. Her inebriated state left nothing to the imagination when that bodycon dress rolled up like a miniblind. Her scars from the mommy makeover were on display for all the decades to witness.

At a twenty-five-year class reunion, we don’t need a fancy event, a disc jockey, or a weekend full of things to do. Who has the energy or money for all that? We just want to hang out at TJ Mulligan’s, catch up, and rehash those embarrassing stories from dances and senior parties. At your first reunion, ten years out of high school, everyone is still trying to impress people with their success. First marriages and foreheads are still intact. But at twenty years and after, the frills are gone. We are all divorced, and our give-a-damn’s busted. We all know who has been to rehab and who needs to go to rehab. Our false pretenses have gone away, and we are more authentic than we have ever been. We have all birthed babies, birthed careers, and birthed a series of bad decisions that have knocked down our need for approval from this group of historic friends whom we won’t see for another decade.

Don’t you love the catch-up game, though?

“Oh, you are a high school counselor now? I bet you are so good at that because of your experience with all of your personalities.”

“What? You’re a Realtor? Well, I guess selling houses is better than all them drugs you used to sell.”

“You’re a plumber now? Well, you did lay a lot of pipe back in the day.”

“Byron Burns, I haven’t seen you since you ran my car through the Medina Cemetery and busted up my vanity plate. Those were good times, Byron. Also, you owe me $14.92.”

Growing up, there were five of us who did everything together—Heather, Sara, Ashley, Jennifer, and Amy. Could there be a list of girl names that is any more ’90s? The answer is no. There is no mistaking what decade we came from. We did the slumber parties, rode “the strip,” ditched our boyfriends to hang out. We were tried and true, besties for the restie. We were in each other’s weddings. We even went on a senior trip together to the Bahamas and dubbed ourselves, henceforth and forevermore, “the Bahama Mamas.” And for the record, this is the only group text I will ever be a part of.

The Bahama Mamas (sans Amy, who ditched us for a vacation in Mexico) made our debut at our small town’s social event of the year—our twenty-fifth reunion. We already knew the who, what, when, and where of each other’s lives. I mean, good Lord, there were only eleven total in our class at the reunion. It doesn’t take long to cover all the details.

And of course, even though the Bahama Mamas were up to speed on each other’s detailed life situations, we still found ourselves huddled up together like we were waiting on someone to ask us to dance. Minutes had turned to hours when it hit me. We are our parents. We are our mothers. We are old. We are everything we swore we would not be. Because we, the Bahama Mamas, just spent the last seventy-three minutes comparing surgeries and how many pills we eat on the daily. We have gone from comparing tanning creams to comparing Aspercreme. From comparing torn jeans to torn ACLs. From Boone’s Farm to the nut farm. The one thing that has stood the test of time is mastering the art of not getting pregnant. We all walked away winners in that category.

One of the BMs, with literal tears in her eyes, was telling us about her upcoming ablation. She knew it would be the expiration of her childbearing years. This mother of three was mourning the loss of the children she would never have. We were sucked into a full-on counseling session when her husband turned around and said, “What in the world are you talking about? I had a vasectomy ten years ago.” So let me get this straight, you haven’t been able to have a child in the last ten years, but tonight is the night you want to cry about it? Really? Right here in front of Johnny Scott?

Another BM sat there showing us her new condition where she bruises easily—she looked like she should have been in the class of ’44, not ’94. She had her shin wrapped because her dog brushed against her leg and left a bruise as big around as her homecoming crown.

The heroine of the night was double-fisting Diet Cokes while the rest of us were face-pounding champagne. If I had been through the hell she had walked through the last three years, I would have skipped rehab and gone straight to the big house. Her sobriety was locked down tighter than my geometry teacher’s face-lift. She would have won story of the night. But guess who brought it home for the win?

Me and my hemorrhoids.

I looked at those three heifers and said, “Every single one of y’all can shut up, because I just had hemorrhoid surgery. Take a seat… because I can’t. Until you have had women in your church sign up to bring you casseroles because your anus is burning like a homecoming bonfire, don’t talk to me. Where was your casserole? Where were you on the ‘back end’ when I needed you most? Where were you when this was going down and my surgeon was going up? Not a single one of y’all helped adjust my donut—I could have used some donuts. In high school, I held your hair back when you were throwing up, and you can’t even empty out my catheter bag? You don’t have a story. Your life and untouched a-hole are irrelevant. You don’t even get to sit at my table anymore. You keep on working your twelve-step program, because I can’t even take twelve steps. Awwwwweeeee, so sorry about your shin bruise, but the biggest bruise here is on my ego.” What story you got, Amy? I am sorry you were in Mexico and couldn’t make it to our medical seminar. My story wins the night—so don’t even bother.

Going to a high school reunion makes me reflect on how I thought life was going to be. And good Lord, it makes me laugh at all the things I didn’t know. Strolling the school hallways that still smelled like a mixture of pine-scented bathroom cleaner and the rectangle pizza being served in the cafeteria that day. Peeking into the library where the elementary book fair went down each year—the most educational thing I can recall from elementary school. I thought the purpose of a book fair was to encourage me to read. No, it was to teach kids the crushing reality of being on a budget. Welcome to adulthood, little girl, you can’t afford these sticker books. Go back to class. Also, I would like to take the time to say congratulations to all the recent high school graduates out there for making it through the easiest time of your life. Some of you may feel like it is the end of your life. It is. The end of your good life—living at home for free, someone feeding you and doing your laundry. You will never have this again. So congratulations, you have been set free into a world of hard work, paying bills, and picking up your own prescriptions when you are deathly ill. We tricked you; it’s not fun out here at all.

Going to a high school reunion also means a brief weekend stay at the house I grew up in. And if you are as lucky as I am, your parents’ house will be like an Airbnb stay on Memory Lane. Why in the world can’t we update the childhood pics on the bedside table or just relocate them? It’s like staying in an old dusty hotel where all the black-and-white photos are of people you know. A dreamy vacay destination, really.

Every time I visit my parents, I learn about their friends who have gotten good news about their recent colonoscopies and who have recently checked in at the funeral home.

“Mom, how do you know all of this stuff? Do you just sit around and read the obituaries all day?”

“No, Heather, we signed up for notifications from the funeral home. It just pops up right here on my phone. See? I don’t want to miss anyone’s funeral. That would be awful.”

Are you kidding me right now? I just died. I am dead. Did you get that notification?

First notification of the morning: It’s Betty Jean Winkle’s birthday. Click here to wish her a happy birthday.

Second notification: Funeral arrangements for John Paul Honeycutt. Click here to send a green bean casserole to his grieving widow.

You gotta hand it to that funeral home—they are using technology the way God intended it—“Recue the perishing, care for the dying, click here to send flowers.” All in one fell swoop.

I admit, as I have aged, I have become a little more paranoid about my aging health. “Welcome to forty, I hope you like ibuprofen” was a birthday card I got from a cousin a few years ago when I went flying over that hill. He ain’t lying. One of my favorite games to play is “Is my headache from too much caffeine, my headband, lack of vegetables, dehydration, or a brain aneurysm?” Probably the last. Most definitely.

Coco Chanel once said, “Nature gives you the face you have at twenty. It is up to you to merit the face you have at fifty.” Well, if that is the case, I am not sure who is to blame for this face I have right now at forty-three. The ex? My teenage children? Or the stupid people at Walmart?

No, Coco, if I am lucky, science will allow me to drag this forty-three-year-old face into the spa and walk out looking twenty-nine over and over again. Look, I have never loved someone as much as I love my esthetician. She is my soul mate, who will never let me look as old as I feel. She comes at me with those needles, and I can’t say no. If my kids have to starve, so be it. Take all my money, and take all my wrinkles with it.

Look, I don’t know how it happens. One day, you are twenty-five, staying up until three A.M., eating pizza and watching movies. The next day, you are forty-three, eating kale, and you pull a muscle in your back putting on your socks. At what age do I start storing my leftovers in Country Crock butter tubs? When do I start licking my fingers to turn the pages in a book? I feel like that is a pretty significant aging marker. And fellas, I feel like life should change a little for you when you hit your forties, too. It’s time to leave them young girls alone and get you a woman who understands the signs of a stroke.

If I am up late and an infomercial is on, get my credit card. I am ordering all the natural remedies that QVC has to sell. I am watching all the natural skin-care infomercials that Christie Brinkley endorses. Whatever is good enough for the Uptown Girl is good enough for me. I will make all the concoctions with ingredients from my kitchen that supposedly help you age gracefully. And if you rub three drops of olive oil and Epsom salts on a painful spot on your body, it will immediately feel greasier and saltier. Works every time. Doesn’t make me feel any younger but definitely makes a great salt scrub in the bath.

Being over forty doesn’t seem as bad as it used to. Life isn’t over. Look at Ellen. Look at Sofía Vergara. Julia Child wrote her first cookbook at forty-nine. Martha Stewart published Entertaining at forty-one. J. K. Rowling published Harry Potter when she was in her forties. Then there’s Meryl Streep and Oprah, who are killing it in their later years. And we can’t even touch Jenny from the block. She is on fire but not from hemorrhoids.

Don’t worry, beauty is on the inside, not the outside. Riiiiiight. My insides aren’t beautiful, either. My liver is two pills short of being pickled. What’s left of my intestines has a thick coating of laxative sludge on the inside. My lungs have never smoked, but they have sucked in enough hairspray to style Tammy Faye Bakker for her casket. And the spots on my skin? I earned every single one of them. When your boyfriend has a tanning bed in his home, your perception of what a good tan looks like gets a little skewed. I was never dark enough. By the time prom season rolled around, all you could see of me was the whites of my eyes and my teeth. Still wouldn’t wear a light-colored dress because it might “wash me out.” Thank goodness for modern medicine and dermatology.

Are the notifications from the funeral home just an inevitable part of life? Do those things just come with aging, like hemorrhoids come with childbirth? I suppose the older we get, the more loss we experience, and the more illness we see, the more fear digs its spiked heels into our minds. The one thing that scares me the most is becoming a chronic worrier. That woman who can barely leave her home because she is afraid of the danger in everything. That never looks good on anybody. I think we moms get hit the worst, no doubt. Most of us moms are conditioned by all the years of rearing children. I think it is an uphill battle for the rest of our lives. We carry the concern and fear around our necks like medallions. As I grow older and wiser, I want to see life through a lens of gratitude for my own blessings. I want to see each day as a gift even if it doesn’t always feel that way. I want to serve others from a place of love and generosity, not a place of fear and panic for my own family’s health.

When I think about what I want to become in the years ahead of me, I focus on the word “become.” I think most people think that they have already arrived in their forties and fifties, and they plan to coast to retirement. I have no intention of collecting seashells on the seashore in twenty or thirty years. I want to keep becoming. I want to continue evolving. I want to live new experiences and keep contributing to this big ol’ world.

There’s a certain entitlement you carry with you when you have a little bit of age under your belt. People give you more grace to say and do what you want. You aren’t afraid to make decisions, others’ opinions of you carry less importance, and if you are lucky, you have a little bit of a nest egg to spend on yourself and others. I hope that my biggest goal isn’t vanity. Wasting time worrying about wrinkles instead of character. Why can’t we handle them both? Take care of our bodies so that we feel good but also focus on making others feel good. I don’t think it is one or the other. I think I will do both.

I think aging gives you permission to live with intentionality. Less to achieve, less to prove, more to give back. That is a beautiful thing. Women aren’t allowed to age in our society. Men are. And that ticks me off. The burden of having to be everlastingly beautiful is a heavy one. But the narrative on beauty can change. Here’s the truth: women grow more powerful with age, and our culture does not find power attractive in a woman. Let’s not throw out our makeup bags but find a way to toss out the beauty standards that devalue us. It’s some kind of balance for us ladies between fighting it and accepting it that requires a great deal of grace and courage. Courage—there’s that word again.

I don’t know what is ahead of me. We aren’t promised tomorrow. I want to live a long, beautiful, hemorrhoid-free life with my family and friends. I have lots of fears about aging and screwing it up. All I know is that I don’t want to die alone in my house with a bunch of cats. So for now, I will drink more water, eat less sodium, and wear sunscreen. But I would rather wear pantyhose with my bathin’ suit at the Fourth of July pool party than wear one of those beekeeper sunscreen hats on the beach. Naw, I ain’t doin’ it.