JUNES ARE FOR MEMORIES

Memories sneak up on you. Without any invitation, they kick off their shoes and decide to stay awhile. But this time, this June, I came here looking for them....!

Later that night, the 8th grade reunion would take place in this old school auditorium. Cordial conversations over cordial wines would be the order of the evening. However, it was that very cordiality that could mask the real memories between us. So driving through these graying side streets was a way to vault that rehearsed cordiality, to get into feeling touch with who we all had been all these many Junes ago.

Down the way was the playground where I had tried out for the team. Having eaten more than my required breakfast-of-champions breakfasts, I envisioned myself a pitcher. The first inning of the first game of the first season saw the vision collapse into a rubble of line drives and loud laughter. When Jimmy trotted in from center field, he draped a sweaty arm across my shame with, "Hey, so you can't pitch, just like I can't write. I'd rather be you."

I doubt Jimmy will remember that small kindness, but I enshrined it. The memory served me well whenever I felt the tug to be who the world said I should be instead of who I wished to be.

At the corner was another memory that sprang full-bodied to life. It was my patrol-boy assignment for that morning. That morning so different from all the rest. June 6, 1944 when I woke up to Mom's hushed hug of her kitchen radio. "D-Day, Jack, this is what we've all been waiting for!" And it was, for most of our fathers were in the service, and all those they left behind ached so to see them safe again.

As I dutifully took up my post there where the bungalow-ed streets of Potomac and Menard joined lives, Rosie was hurrying up. From out of some unspoken smile in her heart she hugged me. Now, mind you, this was Rosie! The dancing-eyed brunette who sat only one row away where her crossed calves all this year had awakened in me storms of aspirations greater even than my shattered desire to be another Bob Feller on the mound.

Clearly she was exuding the repressed joys for fathers and uncles soon marching home. And yet how was this hugged 13-year-old guardian of the streets to be clear-headed in the throes of sudden requited love? Rosie and I said little after that embrace, but all day long -- all life long -- this retired patrol boy has carried the moment tenderly in his boyhood heart.

There were other sacred moments and places in the old neighborhood. Each a small monument of a memory. Johnny's Huckleberry friendship...Pat's small hand in mine under large moons..Tony's irrepressible unwillingness to take serious all those serious things I took so seriously....and of course those much maligned black-robed nuns who indoctrinated us with the teachings of the Vatican, but even more the lessons of caring for one another. How many would be there tonight? Hard to say, but even if I were never to show up, they each live a daily life in my daily memory.

After all, reunions aren't just for Junes. They're forever.