The 25th anniversary of my college graduation is coming up this June. It’s hard to believe it’s been 25 years since the day the great I.F. Stone, that iconoclastic journalist and critic of the Cold War, McCarthyism, and the Vietnam War, spoke to the class of 1980 at SUNY Binghamton. 

I can’t remember a word he said but I do recall that his commencement speech was quite long and characteristically controversial, as it elicited boos from some parents in the audience. Their reaction disgusted and embarassed me.

My twin sister went to a different college and I don’t know who spoke at her graduation because it was on the same day as mine and I couldn’t go. My mother came to my graduation, while my father went to hers. They were divorced so it was probably better than way.

While I’m not sure if I’ll be attending my 25th reunion, my sister is planning to go to hers. She got a questionaire in the mail that asked something like: "So, what have you been doing since graduation?"

To me, it seemed like a horrendous exercise in personal reductiveness. A friend who went to college with my sister said she took one look at that questionaire and knew that she was incapable of filling it out. "I’m having a mid-life crisis, I wasn’t going to sit there and do it."

Those kind of reunion questionaries invite boasting, whether it’s about spouses, children, career, or creature comforts. You feel like you’ve really gotta impress all those people you went to college with: Look how great my life is. Look at my kids. Look where I live. Look at my degrees. Look at my job. Look how much money I make!

So I got to thinking: WHAT have I been doing since the day I.F. Stone spoke to my class in the Broome County Arena? What fabulous resume can I whip out to impress my peers, what personal biographical detail will just wow them all….

Hmmmm.

Well…

Ahhhh….

Seriously, how do I honestly characterize a quarter century of my life? Is it all really just a list of degrees, courses, jobs, addresses, and names. Am I really my resume?

What about the interstitial life – the life that goes on between the lines of all the other stuff. The little discoveries we make about ourselves; the conversations we have with friends on the phone; the surprising moments we have with our children on the way to the store; an inside joke told over and over; the words of a wise therapist; getting proposed to at Two Boots Restaurant on Avenue A; an ephiphanic walk across the Brooklyn Bridge; stopping at the National Poultry Museum while driving through Kansas (see pix);  hearing Caetano Veloso, Ornette Coleman in concert and Patti Smith at CBGB’s ; a memorable meal in a small Tuscan town; my son and daughter’s first words.

What of the life we live concurrent to the resume life. The life of our hearts, our minds, our sensations? Our attempts to just BE.