Summer's Highlight: Mom's 75th HS Reunion

Attendees of the Pope Pius XII 75th high school reunion. Mom didn't want to be in the photo since she technically didn't graduate with the class.

One highlight this past summer was a Friday afternoon in late June that I spent happily surrounded by a eight women at a country club in Wayne, NJ.

All seemed charmed by my presence.

Full disclosure: one of the women was my Mom.

The occasion was the 75th reunion of the 1949 co-ed graduating class of since-closed Pope Pius XII High School in Passaic, NJ.

Mom did not actually graduate with that class (that's a long story), but Dad did... and Mom did go to school there and was Dad's date for all the other Pope Pius XII reunions over the years. That afternoon, I admired a faded Polaroid of them all dressed up and posing with other tanned and happy couples on the occasion of the school's 40th reunion anniversary trip (in a rented bus, with a case of champagne) to Ocean City, Maryland.

Here's a photo from the school's 15th reunion in 1960s. Missing is "The Shining"'s Jack Torrance in a tux in the front row. 

But this reunion day in Wayne, 35 years later, was very different.

"Where are all the men?" one of the women asked as the group gathered for lunch... a Caesar salad and a choice of filet mignon or roasted chicken as an entry. (I seemed to be the only one at the big round table who chose the chicken, so maybe red meat is better for longevity than we've been led to believe.) 

"They're dead," I whispered in Mom's bad ear, thinking she wouldn't hear me. But she giggled and tried to hush me.

The background music chosen by our hosts at the North Jersey Country Club -- from "In My Life" by John Lennon and The Beatles to "All I Have to Do Is Dream" by the Everly Brothers to "Young at Heart" by Frank Sinatra -- set a nostalgic tone for the enchanting pre-meal conversation.

Several of the women graduates, all in their early 90s, were assisted and escorted by their daughters or granddaughters. I escorted Mom to the event... although I was a poor substitute for my Dad.

Chick's 1949 yearbook page, with messages to Gen

I heard a lot that afternoon about Dad, whose high school nickname was "Chick." His baseball teammates had teasingly inflicted that moniker on him for being as good looking as a woman.

"The ladies were all after him," a former prom queen confided in me in 2024. "Chick did the artwork for our school operettas," noted another woman... as if I needed a reminder that Dad was a talented artist in addition to being the school's baseball and basketball star and senior class Student Council president.

Mom, Gen, and me

Still another '49 graduate -- Genevieve "Gen" Kelly (Donatello), the reunion's organizer -- recalled a time that she and Dad and classmate Bob Swit (brother of the actress Loretta Swit) went on an impromptu horseback-riding adventure at stables in Paramus after a round of golf. I wonder if Mom ever knew.

I asked several of the women to point out their photos in the 1949 yearbooks ("The Keys") on hand, and lovingly preserved, at the reunion. Carol in green showed me a recent photo of her surrounded by large group of happy descendants on the Lake Mohawk shore. And I learned -- and Mom learned -- that Mom and another classmate shared the same birth date. The birthday buddies, born in 1932, had never realized that until 2024.

That woman, Isabel Mineo, had been editor-in-chief of the "Eagle Light" school newspaper. She proudly showed me a story from one of the old issues about "Robert Varettoni '49" speaking on a radio show ("970 on the dial") that broadcast a civic Junior Town Meeting from the Kresge-Newark Building. Dad had spoken on the topic, "Should We Extend Government Health Service."

Mom and her Birthday Buddy

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I was most touched when Gen stood up after lunch and before a group photo, and led the women in song... "The Blue and Gold," the alma mater of a high school in New Jersey that closed its doors in 1983:

There's a starry light that shines in our eyes / there's a sone in our souls we'll ever sing / for a love that burned in our hearts so true / for our Alma Mater, the Gold and Blue. / With loyal hearts to you we bring. the glory we now fondly sing, / "The Gold and Blue" 

Here's that moment, captured in video.

Marcel Proust in Plain Vanilla

I read another original poem in public earlier this month. Surrounded by black-and-white photos of musical greats with a connection to Teaneck, NJ, I read "The Last Emperor of Vanilla Ice Cream" at the Puffin Cultural Forum.

I view this as my "Wallace Stevens Lite" effort, but a kind poet in the crowd that night said the poem reminded her of Marcel Proust's inspired reaction to tasting a madeleine cookie.

So I post this here with apologies -- and memorial birthday wishes -- to Marcel, born this date (July 10) in 1871.

The Last Emperor of Vanilla Ice Cream

That’s me, plain vanilla.

But don’t underestimate me,

because at 3 in the afternoon,

everything changes.

Not 1 o’clock, not 2,

but precisely at 3,

I travel back in time,

with memories so sweet.

When my Nonna calls to me,

I am outside with my grandfather.

We are working in the garden

under the rural New Jersey sun.

In my memory,

I spend all my summers here,

with my grandparents, in this place,

where Nonna calls to us, precisely at 3.

Two scoops each, condensing in the heat.

Brought to us on a serving tray,

in porcelain dishes, with silver spoons

that once touched my great-grandmother’s lips.

During those summers,

when unicorns were still possible,

vanilla dribbled down my chin,

making my grandfather laugh.

Wiping my face with the back of my hand,

licking my fingers,

leaving all my messes behind.

My brain, frozen in time.

That’s me, chaste and wholesome.

The opposite of concupiscent.

Embracing the chill of reminiscence.

Treasuring the remnants of my boyhood empire.

I savor the taste of these words:

Plain vanilla ice cream, precisely at 3.

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“And suddenly the memory returns. The taste was that of the little crumb of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray…when I went to say good day to her in her bedroom, my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of real or of lime-flower tea. The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it; perhaps because I had so often seen such things in the interval…But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered…the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls, ready to remind us, waiting and hoping for their moment.”

–Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Lost Things, Volume One

Haiku: 9 Years Ago Today

Me, with my daughter.

My wife, behind the camera.

Time is relentless.

My New Jersey Trilogy

So Friday night, as they say, I did a thing.

I read -- well, did my best to "perform" -- one of my poems at the Hamilton Arts Festival showcase at the Great Falls Center, sponsored by the Paterson Performing Arts Development Council.

The short trilogy is mashup of two revised older works with a new poem in between, and I tried out a draft in front of a warm and encouraging group of poets earlier at The Platform, an open mic hosted by Arts by the People on the first Wednesday of every month at the Madison Community Arts Center.

The Arts Center posted about the event, and that's where I picked up the photo of me posted here.

Below is the "finished" piece. One of the get-to-know-you prompts at The Platform was "describe your writing routine," to which I responded: "I write, then I rewrite."

"My New Jersey Trilogy" is not as random as it seems, given my obsessive style. It is exactly 500 words; Annabel is mentioned three times in each of the three sections; I invoke an incantation to raise the dead; and "Thunder Road Revisited" is structured in six verses and a bridge, like the song itself. Perhaps most importantly, it's not factually "The Confessions of a White Widowed Male." My wife of 38 years was there to support me in Paterson.

Scenic overlook at Garret Mountain

My New Jersey Trilogy

(For your consideration…)

Three related scenes referencing three favorite writers:

Edgar Allan Poe, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Bruce Springsteen.

It begins with Annabel, my muse and imaginary wife of 38 years,

scanning People magazine after sunset in our suburban living room.

 

Scene 1.  Thunder Road Revisited

Under the spotlight

of a table lamp,

Annabel sprawls across her favorite chair.

 

Her right leg hangs over the armrest,

like Hyman Roth in “The Godfather: Part 2,”

a movie we saw long ago when we lived across the river.

 

On this night, my wife is reading

that Julia Roberts’ favorite lyrics

are from a Springsteen song.

 

Show a little faith; there’s magic in the night.

You ain’t a beauty but, hey, you’re alright.

 

“He could only have written that song

when he was young,” says Annabel.

“It’s filled with so much passion.”

 

So I look her in the eye,

cross the room to her side, and turn out the light,

revealing an ordinary night.

 

I bow to steal a kiss

and take Annabel by the hand.

 “Baby,” I say, “let’s go for a drive.”

 

 

Scene 2.  Gatsby in Paramus

 

It has been one year since Annabel died...

I wait alone for my eye exam in the showroom

of Cohen’s Fashion Optical at the mall.

 

Surrounded by 100 sets of spectacles,

I begin to write a poem

about my life and my bride.

 

When a man with a blood-stained hole in his back

appears from nowhere,

sits right beside me, and peers over my shoulder.

 

“It’s about my darling Annabel,” I explain.

“I know,” the man replies, his breath stinking of death,

“But I wouldn’t ask too much of her…”

 

He gestures toward a flickering spectral shade

under the fluorescent green Ray-Ban display.

“I’ve learned, Old Sport, that you can’t repeat the past.”

 

“Can’t repeat the past? Why, of course you can,”

I cry, incredulous and defiant,

in the face of 200 vacant billboard eyes.

 

Why, I possess the power to conjure

when I write.

When I write,

when I write,

 

Annabel’s ghost can be revived.

 

 

Scene 3.  Scenic Overlook at Garret Mountain

 

This is a dangerous place to stand:

Cliffside in Paterson, in the descending dusk.

 

Past the highway at my feet, across the Hudson,

a dizzying view materializes in the Emerald City skyline:

 

I see… a housefly… alight…

on my Annabel’s thigh.

 

It’s 40 years ago, yet I clearly see my bride languidly napping

in the bedroom of our old apartment in New York.

 

The fly rubs its hands, obsessed, plotting its next move,

until shooed in a flash by a dismissive twitch of Annabel’s flesh.

 

Decades disappear just as fast,

as cars on Route 80 flee to the west.

 

I show a little faith.

I face to the east.

Blinding orgastic lights cast shadows

on that fresh green breast of the new world.

 

I catch my breath on this precipice,

these wounds dark and deep.

 

40 years later,

across the sounding sea…

With so much passion for Annabel,

I still watch her while she sleeps.

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As a postscript, since I'm posting this on Father's Day 2024... and just to remind my poetic self how common I am... I offer this New Yorker cartoon by Ali Solomon.

🙂