Vacation's End: Reflections on a High School Reunion and Charter Hall

David fishing at Charter Hall.

It's about 11pm here in Arusha. We have been back for a bit less than 24 hours and I want to get a blog posted before starting back to work tomorrow morning. A whole new set of activities will start then--more the feel of another beginning, and I want to savor the events of the final 2 weeks of our time in the US. I could say vacation, but returning home for an annual visit does not have the contours of a vacation. Often, a home leave after any amount of time away involves much relationship maintenance and rebuilding. Catching up with friends and family can be both physically and emotionally exhausting, yet the work put in, like cultivating a good vineyard, yields fruit over time for many years, and generations to come.

I don't think I can sum up all of the individual reunions we had. The time however, divided itself into four fairly even segments. As I mentioned in the last post, we spent the first week and Rebecca's parents' house and had time with my brother's family who came up and saw us from Nashville. The second week, we housesat for Rebecca's brother who lives in our old neighborhood and we had many opportunities to catch up with our 'homies'.

 The third week was a special treat as I had made plans for Rebecca and I to go to North Carolina for my highschool reunion. This was to be a trip for the two of us to Black Mountain and we were looking forward to having a little time together without the kids. Our parents very generously agreed to watch them for four days. Most of the time they were with Rebecca's parents, but twice they took turns visiting my parents and apparently had a blast and helped out with many chores and activities including, mowing lawns, making melon balls and jam, and picking apples and tomatoes.  We drove down in my dad's Honda fit. It would be about a 7 hour drive but we added a stop at a town near Winston-Salem to see my brother Mark's family. We got there in the late afternoon and saw Mark, Christine, and their daughter Grace. It was good to catch up with them albeit briefly. They made us beef brisket which
kicked off a long string of tasty Southern dishes that we partook in during our visit.

We headed on to Black Mountain in the evening and got there by 10pm. The reunion spanned 5 days at this very cool old YMCA resort. I will not forget walking into the lounge that connected most of the rooms and seeing over dozen older but familiar faces sitting around chatting. (No one had gone to bed.)

It might be a good time to answer the question of why a high school reunion would go beyond a single afternoon or evening. Or why people would come quite literally from all over the world to be at their 40th reunion. The answer is that I graduated from a school called Woodstock, located in the foothills of the Himalayan mountains in a town called Mussoorie in Northern India. It was a mission boarding school that is now a well known International school. My classmates were an amazingly eclectic group of people from all over the world. I think 50 of us represented about 20 different countries. We were diverse in terms of social classes as well, missionary kids, diplomatic and military kids, kids of oil company execs, many children of Indian businessmen, pilots, doctors, statesmen. And kids of every faith-- Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, and Muslim. We all lived together, and I believe that the time spent living together in this remote place without our familes, built us into a cohesive community. We were all family to each other, and going to this reunion, the fourth one I have attended, felt like coming back to see one's favorite childhood cousins. We don't keep up much beyond Facebook but when we are together, it is a special time.

We usually have reunions in India on the 5 year marks and in the US on the 10 year marks to accomodate as many as possible. I can only describe the time together as deeply renewing. One of the really fun things was cooking together. One of the alums from the class below us, James Hackney, offered to coordinate all meals and be head chef if we would be prep cooks and cleaners. It was fun to work together and James made some amazing meals including one of the best Indian meals I have had in the US, as well as a North Carolina barbecue, smoked for about 10 hours that was to die for.

Other activities we did included a hike--since hiking in the Himalayas was our 'screen time' at Woodstock. (That was the main activity we did when we were not in school.)  We found, however, that we were not as young as we used to be and ascending 2000 feet in two miles was far easier than going down, and many of us were staggering down with very sore knees. But we did have a great time doing it.

The best part were the 2nd and 3rd evenings (over the weekend) when most everyone was there. There were about 20 of us of our class of 50, and on thos nights we sat around a campfire and shared one-by-one what we have been doing, our successes, failures. It is probably anathema to most people to imagine going back to your graduating class to be completely vulnerable and share your heart. But with this group it was possible. I cannot describe what a moving and renewing experience it was.

I made one observation about our 40th reunion during my talk. It was that the past 2 I had attended, 20 and 25, we were all still looking at the arc of our lives and seeing that we were still on the side of it that was rising. (I used an image of us as arrows shot from bows in 1978.) Now at 40, we seem to have generally crested. The top of the arc is somewhere behind us. And that does not mean we are at the end of our life, but I think part of the capacity to be vulnerable comes from the fact that we are not in the phase of 'striving'. We are mature and able to 'take stock' as it were, of what is good, and what is not, and talk about it. In my own time of sharing I compared my life to a very ambitious hike a group of us did in our senior year to the source of the Jumna river, and then tried to summit a peak called 'Bundarpunch', which is 20,700 feet. It was on a glacier and we tried 3 times to climb it with only 1 pick ax between about 6 of us. It was crazy and we never made it, but we did get to around 18,000 feet on a glacier. In my life I feel like I have always been a striver. I generally have the perseverence to aim high--to summit, albeit ill-prepared and somewhat naively--a high peak. I had the courage to try again and again despite several failures, and like our ascent to Bundarpunch, I never made it to the top. But I do not regret the exhileration I feel from having stood at 18,000 feet.

My life continues to feel like an adventure and that climbing experience at Woodstock was a good metaphor for it. It was good to be in the company of some of those who were with me on that trip-- Mits, Mark Liechty, Stuart Gelzer, and remember it as well. It was also good to hear about the successes and challenges of classmates. Many have accomplished impressive things in their careers, several teachers, artists, engineers, academics, diplomats, policy makers, faith leaders, authors, nurses, health professionals at NIH and CDC, corporate executives, a radio personality, one even ended up in Hollywood--all of them shaped by their experience of being third culture kids. That is probably another thing that gives us such a feeling of family.

Rebecca even felt included in that group for that reason.  She has known some of them from past reunions, but also shares the experience of growing up out of one's own culture. Rebecca and I did have some time to do some hiking and swimming together without the group. I also was happy that my brother Mark came down for one afternoon as he was a graduate of the class of 1980 and knew most everyone there.

I left feeling very joyful, like I had had a faith renewal. And it was that although I don't think I can fully explain why. Perhaps because it is good to laugh and cry with people who you love and have not seen for a very long time. I look forward to going back to Woodstock for number 45 in 2023.

Rebecca and I retuned home on Monday of our third week and had to do a number of doctors appointments and other errands. It was busy. We also spent some time with our parents again going between homes for different meals including a Maryland crab feast! Dave and Jean joined us one evening at my parents retirement home and we had a great time with the kids playing bocce ball. There is a very nice court and we played for a few hours. It was good to this with both sides of our family. The children also did some outings with Rebecca while I attended a conference in DC one day. They went to the Baltimore zoo which is another old haunt we used to enjoy. I don't know if seeing the safari animals they see in the wild here was as satisfying this time around though.

On the following Sunday, our last in Baltimore, I did a presentation of the MCC program in Tanzania, then Rebecca preached a sermon. It was a very poignant message, I believe, that captured the challenge of what identity in Christ means in our country at this cultural moment, when identity itself has become somewhat of an obsession. She treated the subject thoughtfully and gently using a text from James 1. I am attaching a link to the sermon below if you are interested in hearing it. It will also be available in higher fidelity from the North Baltimore Mennonite Church website.

The last week, we returned to Charter Hall. I don't know if I can do this place poetic justice because I have described it in so many past blogs and cannot muster the metaphors at this late hour. But it is a retreat center on an estuary of the Chesapeake Bay of which Rebecca's parents are part owners. It has been a part of her childhood, a part of our whole married life, and the entire life of our children. It has a dock house and a lodge. We usually stay in the former and enjoy the simple pleasures like canoeing, kayaking, fishing, swimming, watching wildlife-- bald eagles and otters this year. To our children it is magical and one of the few things for which they will happily give up days of screen time.

We went up on Sunday afternoon with Rebecca's parents and stayed the night. On Monday we hosted my parents and some very old family friends (Louise, and Charlene) along with Rebecca's folks. It was good to spend time with them and remember our youth (since Rebecca and I grew up in the same circle of friends.) David spent every moment divising ways to catch minnows which he then used to catch bigger fish. Oren was content to be indoors more and we played, off and on, a 3 day game of Axis and Allies-- a WWII game that is quite involved. Each round of turns can take an hour. (I'm happy to say that the Allies did win that game.)

On Monday night through Wednesday we invited another family, Bill and Ashley, with their kids Liam and Oz to join us. Liam is David's age but Oz is only 4. Oren, however, really hit it off with him as Oz is very extroverted and quite funny. They spent much of one afternoon on a kayak with Oren paddling and Oz sitting crosslegged on the bow with a supersoaker which he used to squirt anyone in a boat who came near.

We had a nice time having some adult time with Bill and Ashley as well. The weekend was not complete without a campfire and smores on the last night. We departed in the afternoon on Wednesday and got home for dinner at Dave and Jean's that evening. (We wisely got the latest flu shot on the way home at a pharmacy since we can't easily get it in Arusha.)

Thursday was mostly dedicated to packing. We had to distribute the weight of all our new purchases for ourselves and friends between 8 suitcases. Rebecca is the master logician at that. (I pack them all into the van.) We had our last supper with Rebecca and my parents on Thursday night. It was a sweet time but it really felt like we had transitioned from vacation back to our life in TZ when we left Chareter Hall and started packing. We spent the time thinking ahead, rather than back in our conversations that night.

We went to bed late despite the fact that we had to get up at 5am and leave for Dulles airport at 6. The flight back was somewhat grueling. Again, the giant A380 was packed full and I was not sitting together with Rebecca and the kids. Fortunately the person next to me did get up frequently which allowed me to move and walk around. I watched many movies from the Marvel comic series in the 13 hours back to Dubai. We had a short layoover there but about 6 hours in Dar Es Salaam.

Dar was as bad as we feared it might be. Since it was our first stop in TZ we suspected we would have to retrieve all of our bags and go through customs-- we did. (Despite the fact that at Dulles we were assured that bags would be checked to Arusha, in our experience, you have to go through customs and immigration at first port of entry.) What was worse was the switch to the domestic terminal to get a small airline (Precision) back to Arusha. They were not able to check us in more than 2 hours before the flight so we had to hang out in the terminal by the gate where there was no seating, no restaurants, and 8 bags and two very tired cranky kids. (Hooray for computers and internet!) We spent about 3 hours on the dirty concrete floor sitting among our bags before could check in. The plane was slightly delayed to arrive but we left about 8:30 pm for Arusha and arrived and out of the airport by 10pm. Our taxi driver was waiting for us, and took us the last hour and 45 minutes home. We arrived around midnight, dead tired and slept easily through the night.

We did get up and go to church (because we never miss church;-) and then had lunch at George's Tavern so David could have seafood pizza. The kids have 2 more weeks without school, and I cannot say Oren was thrilled to be back. He really misses America. But I am ready to be back to work tomorrow, so I am signing off now. Thanks to all of you who read this blog and especially those who we were able to see in the past month in Baltimore and North Carolina.

Bonus link: Rebecca's sermon here