A sort of homecoming

Early in December my alma mater holds its annual homecoming, but I don’t usually go. I did last year, though, on the 25th anniversary of the graduation of my high school batch. After I got home that night I started putting down my thoughts on the experience but was somehow unable to finish the piece. I picked up the draft recently and was surprised at how much I had written and how close to completion it was. Here it is, finally done. Apologies for being one year late.

High school is a painful time. Anyone who’s been through it knows this for a fact. It’s those four years spent day after interminable day in a room with the same people whom you grow to love and hate. As one of my schoolmates said then, “When they’re not around, you miss them. When you’re with them, you want to throw up.”

Those days did end for me and my batchmates at about the same time the People Power Revolution kicked out the Marcos dictatorship, and the sharpest memories I have of those last months of my last year in high school strike me as incongruous: walking down the concrete of EDSA in my sneakers, marveling at the crowd that extended into the horizon as the broadness of the highway curved toward Cubao beyond my sight, and then returning to school as though after a long holiday, weary and giddy at all the excitement, only to have our moderator, the late Father James O’Brien (Father O.B. to us all), go through with the long test in religion class that the off days had derailed. A week later he announced that he would ignore the results, and we guessed that we had bombed the test, and the kind priest had forgiven us for it. We proceeded to graduate without further incident.

That was 25 years ago. Every year my alma mater in Loyola Heights calls back its faithful to a Grand Alumni Homecoming, and I’ve never attended. Since I’ve spent the large part of the past quarter century walking down its bricked-over pathways or toiling in classrooms in buildings old or spanking new, the requisite nostalgia eluded me. This year was supposed to be different since Batch ’86, the so-called Freedom Batch, were the silver jubilarians. The homecoming was aptly titled “ReBLUEtion.” I glanced through the e-mails and Facebook updates glumly, wondering at the giddiness and excitement. “So are you going to the homecoming?” my friends would ask, all well-meaning, and I would shrug and say I didn’t know.

My wife understood perfectly. Working in alumni relations, she goes to each homecoming with the grimness one brings to a long Saturday of overtime. The homecoming is the biggest event of the year, and the planning and organizing and coordinating wear on the members of her small and undermanned office, and by the time I pick her up late at night she’s exhausted and relieved that there were no disasters this time.

But this year was different for her, too. Her college class (also 1986) would be there, and she would attend not to work but to enjoy herself as a participant. I had no excuse aside from my own diffidence. The night before she asked yet again if I was going. I said I would make up my mind at the last minute. At 7 p.m. on the appointed day, Dec. 3, I got into my small car and drove the 15 minutes to the campus. (Hilda had gone ahead to help out in the preparations.)

Then I arrived and stepped onto the high school’s covered courts. My old classmates were happy to see me, and I was surprised at how happy I was to see them, too. Dodo remarked that the last time we had seen each other was in college, more than two decades ago. Reggie beamed, and I recognized the bright smile that he flashed at the girls at our afternoon soirées. Everyone looked older, but strangely not. Even Jojo, perhaps the most childlike among us, who now sported stubble on his pale cheeks and flashes of silver in his dark hair, spoke with the disarming innocence he always did, as if the world would never be cruel, as if things would always turn out for the best. Teta arrived later, and when I accompanied him to the buffet table I was reminded of his great affability: getting food took a while because at every step he bumped into someone he knew and who knew him, and the recognition turned into handshakes and how-are-you-what-are-you-doing-now stories. Only a call to have our class picture taken ended the food trek; we excused ourselves and headed to the stage.

Memory makes the mundane seem enchanting, magical. The video of our graduation ceremony played on the video screen nearest us, and we stood and gazed at the dark, washed-out images. As videos go it was completely unremarkable. The camera seemed cemented in one position, capturing the desultory parade of morose boys in tight barongs getting their diplomas from and shaking the hand of then-president Father Joaquin Bernas, not as white-headed as he is now, then bowing stiffly to the unseen audience. But we watched it rapt, calling out the names of each classmate, especially of those who weren’t around or who we hadn’t heard from in ages (where are you now, Jason Cacanindin?), laughing at Paey and Jody whose medals weighed down their shirtfronts.

At one point Paul, who teaches at the high school, brought out graying copies of our yearbook. We flipped through them frantically, mocking the grad pics and the funny hair and the dorky smiles. The directory at the end was a hoot; of course none of us lived at those addresses any more, and the phone numbers seemed strange. Wait, Nonoy said, his finger on his name. I still live here! And this is still my phone number! I clapped him on the back and told him he should dial all our numbers and see if anyone, or anything, answered.

Then the video changed: a basketball game between our juniors and another team. Everyone looked too thin, their shorts too tight, their hair too big. The seats were empty, and the score never flashed on the screen, and there were no replays. It was odd, a somber athletic event, as if it had taken place in some bombed-out church. But like the graduation video, the game exerted a spell; we watched it mesmerized by its very existence.

High school boys we again were. Martin, chief prankster of the batch, insinuated himself into every class picture taken on the photo-op stage. He would dart up the stairs, with a beer in hand and a wink of mischief, and stand among people who weren’t his classmates. Jon, whose thin and light mane was now darker and thicker, giving him a more serious demeanor, chatted up two fetching promo girls for the better part of an hour; did he leave with their phone numbers? Seconds after our batch photo was taken guys at the back spritzed beer onto those in front, who of course retaliated.

There was plenty of music, of course. RJ Jacinto came on with his band and tore through some rock-and-roll tunes. RJ was retro even when I was a student, but I grinned and sang along till I got hoarse (“Shake it up, baby, now! Twist and shout! Wooooo!”). Someone shoved can after can of San Mig Light into my hand, and I drank gratefully. Later I met up with Hilda at her table at the other side of the covered courts. We went over to the photo booth and had snaps taken; the attendant dutifully gave us the free print, which helpfully informs me of what I look like when I’ve had a drink.

We might call ourselves the Freedom Batch, but it was freakish luck that allowed us to graduate at just that time when freedom had never seemed so golden. Outside the chain link fence of our comfortable little school a revolution raged, making our lives seem small, insignificant. Then we hurtled into what followed — college, jobs, wives, families; joys and sorrows, accomplishments and disappointments — and discovered how quickly 25 years can go by. Time’s “slow-chapped power” makes it the great devourer, but it also stanches the blood. I was happy to be among people who had caused me some of the more pointed anguish of my life. All through the night I bumped into someone whose name I may have forgotten but who I recognized, and we shook hands or clapped shoulders anyway. Had I been a thorn in someone else’s side? Had the pain I caused dissipated over the years as well?

Soon enough Hilda and I decided to leave, and we walked through corridors that seemed too narrow, their ceilings too low, past rooms where parts of my youth lie buried, then on paths under trees strung with electric blue lights, our step lighter than usual, then we drove over familiar roads past the exit and out into what remains of our lives.

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