High School Reunions & Those Absent, but Not Truly Gone – Tribute #1 – Martha – My 6th Grade “Girlfriend”

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For our 45th high school reunion in 2013, we made stand up table displays of our departed classmates.  We also solicited written tributes and memories from their friends and classmates, and we displayed the photo tributes on decorated tables and placed the written memories on the tables next to the photo of the departed classmate for others to read.  Inevitably, we now add more tributes at each five-year reunion.  The cover photo of this posting is a collage of the photo tributes we have made over the years.

I personally wrote three memories/tributes for that 45th reunion – one of a “girlfriend” I had starting in sixth grade, another for a classmate I had just a few interactions with, and a third for a classmate who I only knew by acquaintance and name in high school, but who, through a chance encounter eight years or so after we graduated from high school, deeply affected me because the way his eyes and head moved with a look of being overwhelmed reminded me so much of the struggles of a roommate of my college days.

We are now planning and preparing for our 55th year reunion, and I again thought of these friends and persons once alive and conversing with me, but who are now gone.  And as I thought of them, I realized that over the years, the moments with these individuals, and the realities and issues and burdens of those high school times and the times beyond, have not lifted and evaporated away, but have rather deepened and penetrated more into my being.  And I think – but more, I truly hope – that this is because I have also deepened as a person over all these years.

Below is the memory/tribute I wrote in 2013 for Martha, my 6th grade “girlfriend”.

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Martha – A Memory

I met Martha in sixth grade.  There were two of every grade at St. Ferdinand’s Grammar School and even though she may have been at St. Ferdinand’s since first grade like me, I really did not know her or any of the children in the other class. 

When I met her, it may have been in the second semester of our sixth grade and for some reason our class had to go over to the other classroom for the day – I seem to remember that our classroom had been broken into over a holiday weekend and a window had to be fixed and glass cleaned up – that might have been it.  But I thought it was sort of fun being somewhere else and it was like an entirely different world.  And for some reason Martha was one of the girls cleaning the desktops and her red hair caught my eye and I was sort of fascinated by her as I had always thought I would like a girl with red hair.

And as I was sitting sharing a desk with someone, Martha came next to me, and she was sort of bending down cleaning the desk across the aisle from me and I just reached over and smacked her on the bottom thinking that I probably shouldn’t have done that as soon as I did it.  I think there was then a commotion around me, and I thought I was going to get into trouble – after all this was a Catholic school – and then Martha turned around and was smiling and laughing and she had a white rag in her hand, and I was fascinated by her. 

And she was laughing and talking to someone towards the front of the class – perhaps the teacher, a nun – and I didn’t turn around to look as I was fascinated even more now by her, and I didn’t want to quite yet get into trouble in a strange classroom surrounded by a lot of children I didn’t know.  And as I watched she seemed to be saying that nothing happened and then she smiled at me and gave me a flick with her rag and then turned back to the cleaning of the desktops and I thought – wow, a red-haired girl who didn’t get me in trouble when I smacked her bottom and who seemed to like me.

Our class was only in the other classroom for that day, but after that I remember getting a few notes from her through girls in my class and they were very nice notes.  I think I might have even shown one of them to my mom because they were the first notes from a girl I had ever received.  I might have written back.  And I was even brought over to her a few times by the messenger girls (I don’t think the boys and girls were really supposed to mingle during recess and lunch) and I was always sort of in awe that a girl with red hair really liked me and I really liked her because she was friendly and nice and had a big smile not just on her lips but also in her eyes for me.

In our first year at Alemany, I asked Martha if she would go to the Homecoming Dance with me.  She said yes.  My dad drove us to the dance.  I bought her a corsage (my older sister probably gave me some money).  I remember her dress was short and yellow.  She was happy to go.  As we walked through the quadrangle past the chapel towards the gym, a junior or senior made some remark loud enough for us to hear and sort of laughing that we look so young or like kids.  The girl he was with was just silent, but she did not seem unsympathetic to us.  I was embarrassed, maybe Martha was also, but we walked on and had a good time.  I loved to dance, and I was a good dancer, so I think Martha had a good time also.  After the dance, we left with my sister, who was a senior, and her date and went to eat somewhere and then he then drove Martha home, and then me and my sister.  I went into the house first.

At that time, I sensed within me, and I also sensed in Martha, that in some ways we were retreating from each other not because we did not like each other, but because we were not children anymore.  We always remained friends in high school, we were always glad when we saw each other and for me at least, she always had that warm and maybe even loving smile on her lips and in her eyes for me.  She was always kind, friendly, and even when her laughter became overlaid just with the things of life – as such it was in high school – there was still that reaching out and touching and kindness without expectation on her part.  She always exuded kindness, that was it, and she possessed a warm and sympathetic heart, and this is what I remember of Martha, my sixth-grade girlfriend who I met by smacking her on the bottom and who then smiled at me.

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