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Emotions can be quite the wild animal. I’d spent a month at Yale, happily enjoying my new life, making friends, growing close to people who I’d not known a mere month ago, and having a generally easy transition into college life. I still talked to my friends from high school on AIM and such, but I didn’t really think about the fact that I was two hundred miles away from the kids still stuck in high school, and even farther from some of my peers.
Then I went home.
I went home for my high school marching band’s annual home competition, to help out as an alumni, and to see everyone again. When I got home and saw my brother, I felt an upwelling of emotion hit me. It’s almost like the feeling you get in a really sad movie when that heart-wrenching moment happens near the end. In my obliviously frenzied life at college, I had forgotten how much I missed him. My parents, too, escaped my emotions while I was away. I’d forgotten what it was like to be able to speak freely and openly about my life without fear of prejudice or misconception.
And then I saw my friends, especially the few I shared my greatest passions with. These were the people who shared my love for the band program and the group of teenagers bound by it. The people who I spent countless hours talking and laughing about the one thing that permanently brought us together. The people who grew into themselves alongside me, who helped shape me into the person I am today. The people who crossed my mind too few times throughout the first month.
So we talked. We talked about our lives in college or high school, we talked about the band, we talked about each other and ourselves. We laughed like we were still part of the same group; we felt our kinship reignite with each hug and each smile. And when I sat on that old, creaky gray chair again, I watched, with pride, the legacy I helped leave. I watched the kids enjoy high school like I did, enjoy each other like we did. I remembered, if only momentarily, our proudest moments over the years. I remembered our shared joys and sorrows, triumphs and failures. And I realized, again, that I didn’t love the program for what it gave me; no, I loved the program because of the people within it, the people who gave me far more than any of them know.
And that’s why I felt that same upwelling of emotion after it was all done. Driving alone through the darkness after saying my last goodbyes, I felt it. In the frenzy to start a new chapter in my life, I had forgotten what it felt like to be with the people who defined the last. When the day ended, as we scattered to our new lives across the country, I really missed it. We’re confined now to sporadic days over the course of the years during which we can come together and relive a special time in each of our lives. And so I missed it.
We created something special in our four years in high school, a part of which will always be in my heart. And as for those few with whom I truly shared this love of mine, I know you feel it too. Our lives are diverging, traveling on paths spread too many ways, but our hearts, or at least the small part that will always remember, still travel together.
I miss you guys.
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awww!!! That was so sweet!
Thanks for coming it meant a lot to many of us in the band and even those that don’t know you have heard stories and were pleased to see you and the other alumni. Thanks for not forgetting about us because I sure haven’t forgot about you and the other graduated seniors. You and others have left an incredible impression on my life that made the person I am today as well as a complete and utter band geek and I am forever grateful to you and your fellow alumni for that. Please come back for another show. :)
~Rachel