Reunions
August 24, 2024
I never liked class reunions. I went to my 20-year high school reunion, had a blast, and never needed to attend another. In five years, I’m sure there will be a 50th, and I won’t go.
I’m ambivalent over family reunions, though as I’ve aged, and no one remains from my parents’ generation, I value those connections we still have to our parents and grandparents. This weekend, I will have mini-reunions with one old friend and one ex! The reunions that surprised me yesterday, however, were with places.
In the ’80s and ’90s, I lived in the Dupont Circle area of DC. I walked down Q Street where I had lived, a tree-lined oasis from the urban noise; the house looks the same, just with fresher paint. Trio Restaurant, the corner tavern on 17th and Q, had the same marquee sign, but with an added “BISTRO.” Nora, restaurant of choice for any celebration, is now Annabelle. National Geographic, where I worked, is under construction for BASE CAMP: A NEW EXPERIENCE, opening in 2026. I walked by the North entrance to the Dupont Circle Metro station, the longest escalator in the system, remembering sledding down the divider after three feet of snow. The first gay bar I ever entered is now a Panera. City Lights and The Childe Harold are gone; Zorba’s and Firehook remain.
From 1993 to 1995, and again in 1996, I was the office manager at St. Thomas Parish, an Episcopal church off Dupont Circle at 18th and Church. The original parish was built in 1891. Franklin Roosevelt was a parishioner when he was President, and other notables worshiped there through the years. An arsonist destroyed the gothic structure in 1970. When I worked there, the congregation met in the old parish hall, the altar of the original church bookending an urban park.
That was the job which taught me the most about life. Compassion. Service. Empathy. Acceptance. I used to quip with the rector, at the time the Rev’d Jim Holmes, that if it weren’t for the Jesus thing, I’d want to be part of the community! The thing is, I was part of the community. Though by that time I no longer claimed Christianity, that parish accepted me.
A new church was built in 2019. I buzzed at the door on the corner of 18th and Church, and saw a smiling person on the other side of the window who came around to let me in. The current rector, the Rev’d Lisa Saunders Ahuja, warmly greeted me and took me through the entire building. I regaled her with stories of Jim (she has never met him) and about once finding, in the basement, a parishioner’s abstract paintings of the fire that destroyed the original church.
Though it wasn’t the same place as when I worked there, it was the place where I experienced so much growth as a human. And that’s what reunions do. They help us define the growth, and loss, that happens throughout life.
