Reunion

My trip down Nostalgia Lane started two nights ago when I watched three elderly. overweight men and three ageless (if somewhat botoxed) skinny women, who appeared to be half the men’s age, talk about a TV show they were all in. They were the people who taught us that no one told us life was going to be this way. 

I think that nothing gives further evidence to this than the actors themselves - Matthew Perry barely said two words. Jennifer Anniston (the only one to have her own child in the series) remains childless. Matt Le Blanc eventually ate too much trifle. Custard - good! Jam - good! Meat - good! And Courtney Cox has lost all control of her facial muscles. But oh my word did I cry. Because life has happened - even to them. 

The following day I ventured up Roberts Road to my alma mata for my 20 year reunion. And what a joy to be reunited with our mismatched herd of goodie goodies, rebels, geniuses who were prone to trip and curly haired  girls who thought they should brush their hair everyday... To be honest I actually think most of us are looking better than we did at high school. But to be frank fashion in the 90s wasn’t kind to burgeoning teenage girls. 

Because if you didn’t have a fake bikini top from Coco Bay that you wore under your strappy shirt ...‘like whatever’. If we were to wear those same bikini tops now I think we would discover how very inadequate the boob support was and if anything they were invented by teenage boys so that they could check out our NR (nipple rise). 

Anything bought from Coco Bay had about a two month lifespan and if a garment purchased from there was brought anywhere near the vicinity of a fire you would internally combust immediately. No questions  asked. 

Shoes were also incredibly unforgiving in the 90s and I suspect that the nagging ache I sometimes feel in my hips comes directly from the fake Perinis I tottered around in. Turtles were perhaps a little more ergonomically friendly but did very little for the rest of the figure. They were like wearing slippers on stilts. 

Big white bell bottom pants with massive zips were a must - great for the larger posterior, and so were satin shirts that would absorb all odours - including the over indulgent Axe deodorant fumes left behind after a slow motion shuffle with a Maritzburg College boy (who incidentally used to sneak into the dorms at night - never my dorm, obviously. I would have quite literally shat myself.)

And then let’s not forget the most atrocious thing that could ever happen to us - the heinous love child that was the emergence of hipster jeans and g-strings as fashion icons at the same time. Add a ‘tramp stamp’ to the mix and you have a look that was so utterly appalling and so utterly accepted by us all that I actually feel vaguely assaulted by the fashion police when I think about it. 

Fast forward 20 years and we’ve all learnt what works for our bodies and our personalities. And now we’re back at the Ascot Inn where we had our matric dance (well actually the Ascot Bush Lodge next door because Freestone cocked the dog). I have miraculously managed to get back into my matric dance dress and my partner in crime, Jax, is decked in her mom’s Hilton Hotel New Years Eve number from the 80s. The two of us have always been up for a dress up and there was no way that we were going to let this august occasion slide. 

And there we all were (well not all - Covid, PTSD and other major life altering moments stopped some from attending) but there we all were. Married, not married. Married again. Divorced. Single. Abused. In love. Happy. Kids. No kids. Thinking of adoption. Adopted already. Fulfilled. Searching. Lonely. Exhausted. Too busy. Well read. Recovering. Medicated... Alive. 

I had a moment when I looked around at this room of women I know intimately. Women who were crammed into that siff, cramped chrysalis with me, squirming around like acne prone caterpillars for five years, waiting to be free. Waiting to have a fully formed frontal lobe. Waiting to get proper boobs. Waiting until we could understand what all those shitty love quotes that we wrote in our journals were all about. Waiting for life to begin.

Perhaps we were a little overeager when, at our final matric assembly, we chose the song ‘I’m a survivor’. Now twenty years later there are several woman from my high school days who have truly earned that theme song. Women who have been emotionally bashed around by inadequate narcissistic husbands. Women who know how it feels to feel the life suddenly stop in their wombs. Women who have lost mothers and fathers. Women who have lost themselves.

And then found them again.

Life has not worked out the way any of our matric journals said it would - one of the naughtiest girls in our grade laughing says she married an I.T. nerd and I proudly announce that I married a barman from Crowded House. I only ever went there once during high school... and that was with my parents... after my Woman of the 90s Ball... because my Dad got bounced from Da Vinci’s for wearing a tux. I like to think Stephen served me my Apple Sours and Sprite that evening. #sophisticated

When I considered the women sitting in that room feverishly filling out the quiz our MC Freestone had cleverly created I noticed one thing. Many of us there were either teachers or people who work in healthcare. And if not that we are academics, entrepreneurs, outliers. In short, my grade of proper odd bods, are the people who keep the spirit of the world going. They are the teachers, healers, researchers, mothers, therapists, academics, empaths who remind us that life is about connection and relationship. 

It was quite a moment for me when I realised that a school whose motto is ‘educating woman for the real world’ has actually produced a group of women who are a respite from the real world. For all the competitiveness of our school’s  ‘renowned’ entrepreneurship programme we have all actually chosen to serve the communities in which we live - even if we are entrepreneurs. And don’t get me wrong many are wildly successful and hugely respected in their prospective fields. But there is a heart there that perhaps I missed all those years ago. 

Or maybe with age comes a heart. I can’t be sure. What I do know is that being back with my friends, even after all these years, has certainly made me realise that despite twenty years of sometimes less than great choices, wildly differing lifestyles, varying spiritual beliefs and future trajectories, life will not change the essence of these teenage girls. They will always be some of the hugest influencers of who I have become - both the good and the bad - but I love who they are now. I might even be tempted to sing badly with them in a huddle, as our sweaty satin Coco Bay blouses stick to our backs, and as we sway precariously in our Perinis - ‘So no one told you life was gonna be this way...’