One of our tenants believes in the “good old days.” He is young. He thinks the fifties and sixties and seventies were times of idyllic freedom. I look at his long hair and think: You’d have been beaten half to death living around here in the 60s; you’d have been jailed for what you smoke. Times were only good in some ways and for some people. I had to wear a skirt to school every single day and had the bloody knees to show for it. School counselors, aptitude tests, and my own mother assumed my primary role in life was to get married and stay home with children. Gary was nearly expelled from school because his hair touched his collar and was not encouraged to pursue . . . anything beyond 9-5 employment or perhaps death in the war. (Gary graduated with honors from the UW and Phi Beta Kappa. He dropped out of grad school to care for his family while his father was dying of cancer.) Our opportunities were limited by gender and class and the draft. And we are reasonably smart and able white people. (So is our tenant, which might be another reason he’s nostalgic for a time that only looks good if you don’t look too closely.)

My 50-year high school reunion was this past weekend, about 200 miles north of where I’ve lived since soon after my undergraduate years. I did not attend. The group photo shows a fraction of my 600 fellow graduates standing shoulder to shoulder. Only a handful wear masks. A friend said she could not recall the events reported to her about shared high school experiences. But I wonder who of us can remember all events important to other people? In the group photograph she and her husband are the only people I immediately recognize.

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