The Part She was Supposed to Play

She wakes up on stage

Disembodied, alone

Is this the definition of empty?

Corner to corner, bare

Vacated, both sides of the proscenium

She thinks back

To her mother's pantry

Jars, lids recently misplaced, broken

She and Junie tried to lick the insides

Tongues searching for some cool sweetness

Or sour grape

Not long enough, agile or acrobatic

To reach those cracks, corners

Laughing into the glass

Short echo from the shallow chasms

Do you feel so full of something

The part you were supposed to get

Your lines, your turn to speak

Shine? You are a good partner

Lover, friend

She is not acting

Still, no one to speak the other lines

No props, set or audience

Plays her part like a teenager

Singing her song in the mirror

Is she in the wrong play?

This plane to New York, Broadway?

Her words reach

Toward the hall's edges

A brief echo, she smiles nectar

And decides who she will be, today.

Guest Blog From Sid: Not Too Many Conversations: A Bearable Reunion Weekend

This week’s guest blogger is Sidney Carlson White, my son. He agreed to this gig after much pleading, against protests similar to those that accompany those at events to which he has been dragged over the years—and much like my reunion weekend promised to be. Too Many Conversations turned into not enough meetings and conversations and memories. The highlight of the trip for Sid (and my father) was seeing a St. Cloud River Bats baseball game at the complex where I played most of my high school baseball. It was the substance of the trip as well. Maybe that and the fact that my parents got to see their grandson.


Our precious moment may have been the time spent at the baseball game with my dad, the three of us. It may also have been my best chance to meet some old classmates who did not bother with the other events at which I appeared. What we will do for baseball and love.



At any rate, I did have one other good moment: when looking at old newspaper clippings at the alumni house, Sid pointed out a box score that showed that I went 2 for 2 at the plate in one baseball game from my senior year. I also pointed out that I went 0 for 3 on my 18th birthday, against city rival and the school and teammates I left two years earlier, Tech High School. I guess it helps to have kids along to point out the important stuff. Here is Sid’s contribution.

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Sidney Carlson White

For the record, my dad’s high school reunion wasn’t that bad for me. Dad met a total of five people from his class, at an event I did not visit (a few more conversations I would be required to endure). The next day, Saturday, was picnic social was anything but—but we got an interesting and somewhat fulfilling tour of Cathedral High School. The fried chicken served needed more flavor (and salt), and the amenities of the picnic were a little kid bouncy castle, face painting, and the nearby alumni house (which was rather interesting and informative, I will admit). I got to visit a St. Cloud River Bats game, the local team. They fell to the Alexandria Beetles (good) after experiencing a 100 minute rain delay. Sadly, the game ended too late for season-ending fireworks after the game. They could not be launched due to noise ordinances.


The brunch social in the school cafeteria the next day fell to similar causes as the picnic, this time around maybe a dozen in attendance, about a third of them were high school staff. The food tasted terrible, like cafeteria food. The day before involved a golf social and an event at a local bar, both of which neither of us attended, but were most likely attended by more people than the events we visited Cathedral itself probably expected a bigger turnout (we all did), but they got what they got.


I survived the event, but you could say I didn’t enjoy it very much. Nobody was there, and there was absolutely nothing for a twelve-year-old to do. When I think hard enough, no one really seems to cater to us. Inflatable castle or tour of a high school I hadn’t even heard of until a few weeks ago. What a selection! It was a weekend of rain-outs, both literally and figuratively.


–Sidney Carlson White

COMMENTS CAN BE LEFT AT http://theclarencewhiteblog.wordpress.com/2011/08/19/guest-blog-from-sid-not-too-many-conversations-a-bearable-reunion-weekend

Too Many Conversations

I am hours away from confronting my former high school peers.  In doing so, I am realizing a few things.  One is that my son is dreading the likelihood of a lot of adult conversation.  Two of the events of this reunion weekend involve family.  This means that he will have to endure my running into people with whom I could possibly have a lot to say.  It has been 30 years.

But this is one area in which my son Sid and I have our greatest conflict.  Too many conversations.  It is not just that wherever we go, I seem to know someone and wind up in what I am told is a boring conversation.  It is that it takes from our precious time and often involves bragging about him.  The mere existence of a parent can be embarrassing enough.  The highfaluting, self-consciousness raising prattle is more than any tween should have to live through.  I am guilty.  I DO know too many people.  And they all have to hear about Sid.  They know this.  They usually ask, first.

Another things I am realizing is why I have not been to one of these gatherings before.   It is not so much that I am recalling my lack of motivation for going, or motivation for staying away.  It is reading comments, sharing, private and public about the dread that comes with the idea of returning to a place that might have been wonderful for a select few, returning to a context from which everyone will be judged, not wanting to be judged, evaluated or compared, not wanting to return to a place that might be much the same as it was when it became clear that we had to escape for more than just opportunity, but for sanity and ideals.

In going back, I am ready to through more than vanity out the window.  I don't care.  I did hear from one of the most dear people who greeted me with kindness and welcome when I first arrived at the new, strange school.  She is not going to the reunion.  As a comment from Jennifer from last week's post ("My First Reunion") reminded me, she is one person who I would like to say thanks to.

At the same time, I am urged by several people to either have fun or make the most of this context-providing experience.  In the next week, I will be sure to share  something.

At the very lest, I will bow out of one of the high-profile events, the evening hanging at the pub on Saturday night.  I will be at the St. Cloud River Bats last home gave of the season with Sid and my father.  In a few minutes, we will get in the car and drive northwest, where grandma and grandpa will be waiting for their son and grandson.  They will feed us.  They will worry as much as I should about my reunion experience and care most that it is a good excuse for them to see their only grandson--and to give him the chance to watch more baseball.And soon, I will be confronted with the truth about how old I really am.

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My First Reunion

A week from today, I will head to my home town for my 30-year high school reunion. Until now, I have not had any desire or inclination to show up at one of these events. Apart from the inquiry of a long-lost classmate a few years ago, I am not sure what kind of motivation is prompting me to join the festivities. I have arbitrarily assigned motives. Not sure how valid they are. I am ready to test them, though, on the fields of high school nostalgia.

Wondering how to prepare, emotionally and otherwise. I will not bring a padded resume, a spouse nor date, nor a fancy car. I will bring myself and my son and maybe a few memories—just enough to facilitate filling dead air in the middle of a gathering.

I don't know if it is being on the younger side of a threshold peering into middle age, but I have only minimal compulsions to impress or care about what anyone will think of me. Or maybe I just think that I am good enough as I am; or maybe my security comes in the hope that, in the next week and a half, I will not gain any more weight, not lose many more hairs and keep only the gray ones peaking out of the corners of my head.

But the biggest rationalized motivation, as I have told a lot of you, is that I am going back to my high school, not to chase fond memories or reconnect with old friends. I am going back to see how old I really am.

I look in the mirror every day. I see changes, but they are so gradual, do I notice the difference? Like when seeing my son after a week of vacation with his mother, he seems taller—because he is; but even clothes that no longer fit and a child that now fits into a men's size 9 shoe seem not to bring the message home as strongly as the difference before trip and after trip.

My current friends who are my age have children graduating college, are grandparents, have been widowed, and have reached other milestones that we could not imagine in the faces of our old class mates, peering from the pages of our old yearbooks.

As the time approaches, I am sure that there will be moments of a persistent low-grade nervous excitement or a little bit of dread. Both will be triggered by many aspects of my time in the halls and on the fields of that school. Even more will be carried by the prospect of running into the women on whom I once had school boy crushes.

I am not worried that anyone will realize that I was not as good of a student as they though I was, not as big of a hockey star as it felt like in that long-lost small world, and not worried that the kindness and niceness that I experienced from several of my class mates will likely fail to translate into the close intimate friendships that seemed impossible even then.

“When I look back on the the crap I learned in high school,” I still can't figure out what that was. Being at the Catholic high school, I learned that being a Baptist, I knew my Bible better than most of my Catholic classmates. I learned that Catholics were not the heathens that they were made out to be by some Baptists—even if they worshiped statues and did penance over grace for forgiveness. I learned a fight song that played for us each time me and my hockey teammates hit the ice or the football team took the field:

Fight, fight Crusaders

Big, brave and bold

Towering to the sky

Your banners, blue and gold

So onward to victory

Fight for your fame

With heads held high

Your battle's cry

Hey, team win this game!

C-R-U, S-A-D-E-R

Crusaders, Crusaders, rah rah rah!

(I remember one of my Baptist friends questioning the wisdom of nicknaming the school after the Crusades, not a pretty piece of Catholic church history, followed by noting the irony of our church's association with Campus CRUSADE for Christ.)

Maybe going back, I will learn something. Maybe I will remember things I learned but had forgotten. Maybe I will remember enough names and faces as to not be too embarrassed. I know I will be remembered.

I will be easily remembered not so much for who I am or was then as much for the fact that I was the only black kid in the school. In years past, I worried that some black guy would show up and be mistaken for me. I then realized that I did not really care, but felt sorry for the man who might have fallen into that discomfort zone. This time, it's me, the real thing.

And maybe my old classmates and I will learn a new perspective on that reality, that there was a black kid in the school and what that meant for him and for the rest of the school community, the good and the bad, the easy and hard, and the stuff that we are still learning today.

In the mean time, I will work on comfort zones, both for myself and for whomever I run into. (It will be better if I remember everyone's name.) I will wear a shirt to the picnic that I wore during my days at the school. (I don't think anyone will remember it.) I hope the reunion will be interesting. I hope it will be fun. I will pretend that I'm really not that old. 

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