25th(!) High School Reunion

Here is the house in LaGrangeville, NY in which I lived from 5-18 years of age.

Here is the view from the house.

The few times I've been back I've been struck by how beautiful the Hudson Valley area is. I love the gentle, rolling hills.

The family who bought the house from us has now lived there longer than we did, and she was kind enough to invite me in. She has loved that house, and oddly enough she loved the wallpaper my mother had put up enough to keep it in three of the rooms and the hallway. Seeing that wallpaper was like opening a well-loved children's book I haven't seen since I was a child.

Wallpaper from the Boys' Bathroom

Wallpaper from the Girls' Bathroom

Wallpaper from the Dining Room

They had, of course, made some changes. There is now a pool in the backyard, and they connected both the living room and dining room to the porch (which they had enclosed) with double sets of french doors. They had also added a large sunken room off the back of the house. But it was the same house in many ways. They had bought all 30 acres of woods that we owned, and so it was still all one piece of property, which was nice.

Sadly, when I went back to walk in the woods, it as apparent that no one goes back there anymore. All those well-trodden trails were gone, and things were very overgrown. It was still pretty, though, and I think if I had been plunked down anywhere in those woods I would have known where I was.

I stayed with my friend Cheryl's in-laws, who live in Milton in a somewhat ramshackle Victorian surrounded by apple orchards overlooking the Hudson.

My friend Jackie happens to live just below them, with a fantastic view over the river. Her children, Isabella and Grace, are 7 and 5, so I'm hoping that soon we can get all the girls together.

The reunion itself was interesting. Jackie didn't go, so I went with Cheryl and her friend Ann. There was a very low turnout (about 50 people out of a class of 580), so there was a lot of "where's so and so?" going on, but it was great to see the people who were there and catch up a bit. It was actually really fun, and I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would. I did come home completely exhausted, though. Traveling down memory lane is much more tiring than you might think.