THS Reunion - Part One

Reunion – reconnecting, remembering, recollecting

In my current state it is difficult to catch hold of the fine threads that started drawing us all together months ago.  I am in a haze of bittersweet memory, in a daze that makes even the simplest task almost beyond me.  I want to rewind, play, rewind, play over and over again the documentary that could have been made of the events of Friday 17^th September 2010.  I was so engrossed in being there that there were only the briefest of moments when i drew myself to one side to observe and see our gathering as the best kind of reality filming that one could make!  I didn’t even take my usual 500+ photographs, managing only about 300, which is one of my methods for “staying in the room”, not running away from a situation.  I won’t try to imagine what the reunion means to any of the other girls who were there nor to those who weren’t there.  I will only tell my own story and even that is already being reframed constantly by the passage of time.

When Taniya first contacted me through Facebook to suggest that i became friends with one Melissa Brinkler she had to inform me that this woman was little Melissa from school, the one who always had something in her mouth, from bus ticket (poor conductor!) to ink cartridge (her poor mother!).  And from there it snowballed.  Within a short amount of time i was friends with Davina, Wendy, Lorna, Helen, Jo, Sarah, Gillian, Rebecca, Joanne, Emma then girls from the other two forms including Harriet, Sarah, Susan, Juliet, Sarah, Helen, Sue, Barbara, Elspeth, and then the hunt was on for other girls.  Jamie and Helen joined FB, Liz, Michelle and Kay were tracked down.  Melissa took hold of the helm and started trying to organise the rabble that is a bunch of 40-something year-old women with various appendages such as children, pets, and partners into agreeing on a date and venue for a reunion.  It is a wonder that Melissa didn’t throw her hands up in despair, utter some beautiful Gallic expletives and simply return to the Alsace ski slopes but she stuck in and finally we managed to agree a date and venue that suited at least some of us this side of the next Olympics.

Throughout all of this time we were all having some wonderful chats mostly on FB, catching up, sharing our stories, our joys and sorrows, learning about each other’s present worlds through posts and comments, and sometimes even meeting in the real world (Helen and Gillian, Wendy and Joanne amongst them).  Jamie is in Australia, Rebecca in the States, Lindsey in Canada.   More hunts continued for other girls, including Jemma Heath, Jane Pinkney, Fiona Skelton.  These continue...

In many ways it seemed weird to be so deeply connected to girls i had spent only 5 years with and yet they were 5 years during which i went through puberty, experienced my first migraine, suffered low back pain for the first time, succeeded at hockey, netball, long jump and discus, failed at tennis, rope-climbing and cross-country running, discovered that i was short-sighted, scared of heights and very squeamish.  The list could go on for many pages.  This was the time in my life when i started to learn about myself and the world around me.  For the first time i was at a school without my mother’s presence.  My sister was two years above me and seemed very sophisticated, i was part of the small-fry again, not quite filling the brand-new uniform, already too big to fit into girls’ shoes.  So the friendships i made left their imprint in my soul.  We went through rites of passage until it seemed as if we were living in a labyrinth – first menstrual period, first kiss, first drink, buying my first 7” single (Squeeze Labelled with Love bought on that trip to Stratford i seem to remember!), reading Jackie and discovering that other girls had problems i didn’t even have the capacity to imagine let alone experience.  It was also during my time at Teesside High that i saw injustice starkly enacted in front of me.  The girl i labelled my best friend (was she? have i added that to enhance the story? is it ok to say i probably had more than one best friend at a time?  Oh all the fragility of adolescence comes flooding back!) was the only black girl in school.  She was treated variously as extra-special and extra-troublesome and it frustrated her constantly.  Interestingly when the teachers were asked at the reunion how they remembered her one of them commented that she was a little monkey.  An innocent comment?  A sign of the racism that was seemingly acceptable still in the 80s?  All i know is that she, Sarah Green, brought laughter, fun and vibrancy into my life.  She was scared of my father and of the Darleks but she was fearless when it came to being true to herself.  I have strong Technicolor memories of a few episodes with her, the first being possibly on our very first day at school.  We were sitting in the canteen having our packed lunches.  I see Wendy, Sarah and myself there.  Sarah is opening her Thermos flask.  Suddenly it explodes its contents all over the table.  I can feel it now.  I freeze, wait for the telling-off, wonder what will happen to us.  Sarah bursts out laughing!  I am surprised, relieved, confused and i’m hooked from that moment on.  This is someone who can show me another way to live!  The other very clear memory i have is of her being expelled from the school.  In my version of the story she is fed up with how the teachers treat her, she has fought with at least one teacher physically, and has decided to rebel.  She comes to school with her hair shaved into a Mohican.  This is not acceptable and she is sent home.  She reappears (a day or so later?) with the Mohican dyed bright pink!  And she is expelled.  I am distraught, furious, desperate, inconsolable.  I hide amongst the coats crying.  I remember being hauled back out.  What was i so upset about, for goodness' sake? The sense i am left with nearly 30 years later is that it apparently made no sense for a white girl to be upset that a black girl had been expelled.  After all she wasn’t really a suitable choice for a friend.  Whether that’s a fair recounting of the events or not doesn’t really matter.  The perception is what counts.  How relieved and overjoyed am i now to have discovered that she did not succumb to the prejudices all around her in the North East.  Perhaps she did for a while but she came back fighting with her astounding gift for fashion and design, her deep desire to trace her birth family, and with a daughter who will always know how special one’s roots are, how essential to being a whole person is an understanding of one’s background, and with opportunities to ask questions, make discoveries and know true love.  It would have been the icing on the cake if i had been able to make direct contact with her.  Instead i am content to know that she survived, succeeded, and knows her true worth.  Who knows?  One day perhaps she will pick up the messages, open the post, join FB, let me find her again...

Back to the reunion!...