Tom and I are at the Baxendell Family Compound in Pittsburgh this weekend, having made the journey to my homeland for a joint celebration of my brother’s birthday and my 10 year high school reunion.
It’s been a pretty relaxed weekend, aside from some moron in a Beamer rear-ending us on 885 and pushing us into the rear of the car in front of us.
My high school dedicated a new building today, a gorgeous new facility, directly across the street from the existing building, designed to house the Upper School while allowing the instruction space in the existing building to be devoted to the Lower and Middle Schools. There was a cocktail party Friday night, at which I quietly enjoyed blatantly walking around in front of former authority figures while holding an alcoholic beverage in my hand- it’s the little things that remind you you’re an adult. The dedication ceremony this morning was a little on the long side- endless litanies of people who had to be acknowledged and applauded for their efforts in raising the millions of dollars it took to build the structure.
As much as I enjoyed exploring the new Upper School and hearing about all the things WT has planned for the future, the real treat for me was walking through the old building, the one I spent four years of my life roaming, on the way over to the party. We entered through the cafeteria, which has been refurnished and didn’t feel quite as familiar, but then walked up the center staircase to the entry hall, always and inexplicably one of my favorite places to pass through. I put my right hand on the railing, looked up at the light fixture at the bend, and smelled the faint scent of that familiar place, walking slowly and breathing deeply.
Suddenly, and just for a moment, I was 13 and it was the first day of freshman year, hoping fervently that this new school would be everything it had promised me when I had visited the spring before. Wondering if my new classmates would like me, and if I would like them. Wondering if I would grow to hate the uniform I had been so relieved to put on instead of choosing a first-day-of-school showoff outfit. Excited, frightened, and hopeful all at once.
I ran into one of my classmates at the party. I mentioned how nice it had felt to walk through the old building and up those stairs and she said, “It still smells the same, doesn’t it?” It does, and it felt like home.
Unlike a lot of people I know, I have mostly fond memories of high school. It’s not that I pine for it, or that there’s enough money in the world to pay me to go back to being a teenager… it’s that my school was (and I’m told still is) a special place. High school is a difficult time for us all- figuring out who you are, who you want to be, and how to get there is hard work- but I always had a lot of support and encouragement from the people around me there. It was a place where you’d always find people to cheer you on while you pursued your passions and they made it safe to try new things, even if it turned out that you weren’t any good at them. 
So while I hesitate to admit it, I actually misted up a little bit at the end of the dedication today when we sang the school alma mater. It’s a ridiculous song, set to the tune of “Pomp and Circumstance,” but the last time I sang it was 10 years ago, at graduation, as I was saying goodbye to this place that had been (and still is, in a way) such a huge part of me.
I still remembered every word.
