On a Clear Night

by Marnie O. Mamminga

  Has it been perfect? Of course not. Do we argue? Sometimes. Do we disagree? Occasionally. Have we hurt each other? Sure.

  But like a lovely woodland wildflower that is accidentally stepped on and then springs back up, our love is resilient. We know that what we have is too precious to lose. So we are fast to forgive. Quick to compromise. Eager to laugh.

  This preciousness was brought into sharper focus a year ago when my husband went in for a routine stress test and, two hours later, underwent an angioplasty for 70 percent blockage in his heart.

  As a lean, lifelong runner with low blood pressure, my husband was shocked at the sudden turn of events. Called out of work, I raced to the hospital. Things moved too quickly for us to notify our children. With false bravery, we tried to give strength and encouragement to the other.

  “Here’s where you have to stop,” the nurse told me.

  To bend down and kiss your high school sweetheart, father of your children, and best friend goodbye under such unnerving circumstances is no easy task. In the moment before the nurse briskly rolled him away, our “I love yous” and goodbye kisses suddenly took on a whole new depth.

  By the grace of God and an excellent surgeon, all went well. The experience only made our love stronger and re-emphasized that every day together is a gift.

  On a recent getaway to our Northwoods cabin, we celebrated the one-year anniversary of his healthy recovery with a champagne toast. As we sat by the fire, I pondered the success of our marriage.

  “Why do you think we’ve been happy?” I asked. “Do you think we’ve just been lucky?”

  “Nope,” he answered without missing a beat. “It’s just plain love.”

  After all these glorious years, even without the hat, he’s still sparking my heart.

  No Place to Run

  Only five could make it. It was 1966, the spring of our junior year, and cheerleading tryouts for our local high school loomed like a cliflhanger on a popular soap opera.

  In a school of over fifteen hundred students, cheerleading was the only team open to girls. There were no competitive sports for girls—no tennis, no golf, no track, no cross-country, no volleyball, no softball, and certainly no basketball. The reasoning, of course, was that we might sweat! We might get emotional! And certainly we couldn’t handle the competition!

  Sure, there was the GAA (Girls Athletic Association), but that mostly involved standing around after school batting a shuttlecock back and forth in unorganized games of badminton.

  Naturally, there was gym class, but even during the basketball unit, our play was limited to “girls’ rules,” which meant you could take only three dribbles before passing the ball, and you couldn’t run past half-court.

  Now who dreamed that up?

  And although one young teacher started a gymnastics club where we could hone our skills on the rings or trampoline, that was about it for exercise.

  All that lack of competitive sports for girls meant there was no place to run. No place to jump. No place to catch a ball, learn about team togetherness, share the camaraderie of a locker room, or work with a coach. We girls were definitely designated to the sidelines to sit and watch the boys. And with all those raging hormones, that was not a good thing.

  There was only one athletic opportunity for us, and it wasn’t even considered a sport. It was cheerleading.

  Because there were only five spots on the squad, the competition was tough, to say the least, and so we started practicing months in advance. Gathering in a friend’s backyard, we unselfishly helped each other fine-tune our cheers, hone our arm movements, and perfect our back jumps.

  These back jumps involved flinging our bodies up into the air and bending them backward to form the curve of a reverse C, the goal being to touch your heels to your head. The more you knocked your head, the better you were. In the school fight song, “Roll On,” this jump was initiated from a squatting position on the floor. Can there be anything more athletic than that?

  On tryout day, the electricity in the gym air rivaled that of an Olympic stadium. Our stomachs were in knots, not to mention the muscles of our backs.

  Adding to our nervousness was the fact that we had to try out in front of the entire student council, which numbered well over one hundred, including the dozens of curious students who came to enjoy the spectacle. Shakespeare could not have dreamed up a finer drama.

  We headed out two by two, as if onto Noah’s Ark, to test our survival.

  When at last all the partnered rounds were completed, we competitors were sequestered in the cavernous, dark gray girls’ locker room to await our fate. Hot and sweaty from the physical exertion and our nerves, we huddled side by side and silently prayed that one of the names called out would be ours.

  After a torturously long wait, the winners were called out one by one to a cheering crowd.

  “Lucinda!” boomed through the humid, still air of the locker room. Hugs all around and out she ran to the roar of applause waiting back in the gym.

  “Martha!” We kissed her and sent her on her way.

  “Patty!” We looked around to see who was left.

  “Carolyn!” We held our breath. One spot remained.

  “Marnie!” In disbelief, I ran out to join the other four, and for the first time we performed the school fight song together.

  And, yes, we cried.

  But not for long! Our new team had work to do.

  We practiced often. We created new cheers. We added the splits to our routines. We yelled till we were hoarse, jumped till our backs ached, cheered till our arms could hardly move. And through all that grueling work, we did what boys never do while out on the court: we smiled!

  Although a few of us were blond, we were not ditzy. We were class officers and members of the band, a cappella choir, student council, National Honor Society, and numerous other organizations. But best of all we were good friends. Even though we were not a clique, spending so much time together drew us closer.

  When one of us was having a bad day, the other four listened. When one of us needed encouragement, we offered her a pep talk. And on the rare occasions when we got miffed with one another, we forgave.

  But mostly we laughed. Doubled-over, split-your-gut laughter.

  Take the Taylorville Basketball Tournament. Because the boys’ teams were using both locker rooms and no arrangements had been made for the cheerleaders, we had to use the referees’ shower and sidestep a pink jock strap that had been left on the shower floor. Butt naked, we laughed till our sides split at the absurdity of the situation.

  Then there was the American Midwest Cheerleading Competition held at the Palmer House in Chicago. Waiting for our turn to compete, we did some amazing detective work and tracked down Jack Benny, who was there for a performance.

  Boldly we knocked on his hotel room door.

  To our surprise, he answered.

  “Hi!” we chirped.

  “Oh, girls,” he said, rolling his eyes and promptly shutting the door in our faces.

  We laughed ourselves silly all the way back down to the competition, one of the first of its kind, which, by the way, we won, beating out dozens of other Chicago-area teams. I don’t think it made the papers.

  And then there were our mad dashes to the games. Whether we were dining at each other’s homes in our pregame tradition, enjoying a meal lovingly prepared by our mothers, or gulping down greasy burgers from the Big Boy restaurant (the irony of the name was not lost on us), we always managed to be running late. With minutes to go, we would race into the gym just as the buzzer sounded and the pep band swung into the school song.

  Crazed with laughter at our constant tardiness, we launched into those back jumps from the floor on full stomachs and undigested suppers. I am proud to say, we never threw up.

  We cheered in rain and snow, did back jumps from the sharp cinder track of the football field, sweated in heavy wool sweaters, and twirled for our last season in the beautiful American Indian–themed dresses with fr
inged sleeves that represented our Blackhawk name.

  Cheer after cheer, we fired up the crowd and the crowd cheered back. (We were leaders before our time in crowd management and, in today’s lingo, created multiparticipatory and interactive events involving several hundred people.)

  For one glorious year, we jumped, we ran, we worked out, and yes, we learned about sportsmanship, teamwork, the challenges of sore muscles, and the camaraderie that develops out of late night talks on a game bus home.

  When the season ended, so did our brief athletic fame. We graduated and went on to college, but managed to keep in touch over the years, no matter how many hundreds of miles separated us or how different our lives became.

  When sweet, beautiful Patty was tragically killed in a car crash at age thirty, we cherished the precious gift of our friendship all the more.

  Nowadays, the four of us are rarely together, but with Lucinda flying in from California for a family visit and the three of us nearby, we will reunite. Lucinda’s eighty-one-year-old mother, Kally, still a loyal Blackhawk fan, has organized a basketball kick-off party for thirty of her closest friends. She thinks it will be hysterical if the four of us perform “Roll On” in some cheerleading sweaters she has mysteriously “borrowed” from the high school.

  We did this once before at Kally’s request, and, let me tell you, there is no dignity left for four fifty-six-year-old women doing the school fight song in sweaters two sizes too small. Back jumps are definitely out, but bust-your-gut laughter is not.

  Oh, and guess what? The Illinois High School Association finally recognized cheerleading as a sport.

  You go, girls! All together now! Yeaaaaaaa Team!

  Shuffle and Deal

  It’s poker night. The hand is five-card stud. The pot is nickel, dime, quarter. The most the boys can lose is ten bucks.

  The “boys” are eight high school buddies from the class of 1965, sitting around a dining room table with pretzel sticks, peanut M&Ms, a pile of chips, and a deck of cards. They’ve been dealing out this fun for over thirty years.

  At this point in time, no one in the group can quite remember when this long card game started. They speculate it began a few years out of college when one of them recognized that enough guys lived in the hometown area to gather for a night of cards. Some knew each other back in grade school, but most met up in high school where their paths crossed through mutual friends, athletics, and music.

  In their early years, the poker nights were late, the beer flowed freely, and cigarette smoke filled the air. Nowadays, it’s a nine-thirty curfew, decaf fills the mugs, and not an ashtray is in sight. Only the peanut M&Ms and pretzels remain.

  And so, of course, does the laughter.

  They are merciless teasers. No one in the group is immune, and each man can give as good as he gets. Balding? Point out he’s lost a few more hairs. On a diet? Pass him the M&Ms. Stuck with unlucky cards? Raise the ante. They are at their best as the butt of their own jokes, and they like it that way.

  Over the years, poker night has been held once a month from September to May in one of the guy’s homes. Typically each wife would hover around to ask what was new with the other wives and children.

  Patience has never been the poker group’s strong suit.

  “Everyone’s family fine?” a poker buddy would ask to shorten this process.

  “Yep, everybody’s good,” they’d answer en masse.

  The sound of shuffling cards was the cue that it was time to get down to the business of five-card draw.

  When poker was at our house, I’d retire with a good book up to my bedroom, which was situated over the dining room. As I lay reading, I’d hear the murmur of their voices, the sound of chips clinking, and the suspenseful silence before baritone belly laughs shook the walls after a well-told joke. This cadence repeated itself throughout the evening until the last hand was dealt and they called it a night.

  Their goodbye ritual was always the same. Pushing back their chairs, the boys stretched and yawned as they gathered cards and chips. Slapping each other on the back, they’d head out the door, their farewells ringing throughout the darkness.

  “See ya, Andy.”

  “Night, Banger.”

  “Take it easy, Fife.”

  “Thanks, Art.”

  “Buster’s house next month.”

  And so it would go month after month, year after year. An eclectic mix of aging high school buddies playing poker with pocket change. Like tumbling dice, the decades rolled by. They cheered as each became a father, marveled as their children grew, danced as their children wed, and wondered at the speed of time as grandchildren began to arrive.

  And then one day they wept.

  On a wintry December morning, just a few weeks after poker night at our house, one of them, perhaps the funniest of the group, died unexpectedly of a heart attack at age fifty-two.

  At his funeral, one of the poker guys gave the eulogy and the remaining six were pallbearers. Seven male friends stood together in a church pew with heavy hearts and unabashed tears. Perhaps then, more than ever, they realized the uniqueness of the bond they had inadvertently created through a simple game of cards. Something ordinary had turned into a jackpot.

  Since then, the tone of the group has subtly shifted. Perhaps to shed their grief, they sit down to play cards only once or twice a year. Instead, they’ve cashed in their poker chips for outings, the first of which was a group wellness stop at Heart Check America, a move that saved my husband’s life when it was discovered he had 70 percent blockage in his heart.

  Once that hurdle was cleared, they shifted into the pursuit of action adventure. They swing golf clubs, rev up the snowmobiles, play basketball, and hit the ballpark. Frequently, they include “their original wives,” as they fondly call us, for dinner outings and casual get-togethers and, consequently, despite our own diverse personalities, we are becoming closer as well.

  Not long ago, the poker group journeyed to the Northwoods for a snowmobile weekend. Sitting around the fire after a day of sunshine and shadow-lit trails, we coaxed Peter, who usually has a harmonica on hand, to play for us. With finesse and style, he broke into the lilting hymns of “Amazing Grace” and “Simple Gifts.”

  As the soulful notes filled the air, the room grew still. Only the fire’s flames flickered in the cabin’s stillness.

  In that magical moment, music articulated the unspoken emotions of the group. In the game of life, these high school buddies have been dealt a lucky hand of long, loyal friendship.

  The poker pot is priceless.

  Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight

  I was ten pounds too late. My fortieth high school reunion was upon me and I hadn’t lost it. Hadn’t dyed the hair, hadn’t gotten buff, hadn’t won the lottery. Hadn’t even drilled up some enthusiasm to go. Even our reunion committee hadn’t gotten it together.

  Befitting our age, we weren’t exactly on the ball, so this was actually the forty-first year since that hot spring day in 1967 when we waltzed out of the gymnasium and into the world with our dreams, some to be realized and, of course, some not.

  None of it mattered.

  Gratefully, at this point in life, most of us appreciate that a gathering of old friends is more of a come-as-you-are party. And those are the best kind.

  By default, having been an officer of my senior class and having moved only five miles upriver from my hometown, I have served as a committee member for our tenth, twentieth, twenty-fifth, thirtieth, and now forty-first reunions, and so over the years I’ve learned a thing or two about them.

  Throw in the fact that every decade since 1965, I’ve also attended my husband’s reunions from the same alma mater, and I am a virtual reunion savant.

  Even so, or perhaps for that reason, I just couldn’t get my spark back. After forty-one years, what did we really have in common anymore? For many, it’s been decades since we’ve seen each other. Our paths have diverged wildly; we are vastly different people.


  And yet, one by one, classmates began to respond, some coming from as far away as both coasts and spending hundreds of dollars to do so. If they could take on all that effort and expense, then I could at least spring for my fifty-five dollars’ worth of hors d’oeuvres and show up as well.

  As my husband wisely reminded me, “There’s always someone that you’ll be really glad to see.”

  Not only was there one, there were many. So, in the spirit of a rah-rah pep song from an old cheerleader, here is a primer of dos and don’ts for an enjoyable reunion experience.

  Class, pay attention!

  1. TAKE A RISK AND GO. Reunions by nature are tricky business. Some of us have gained weight, lost hair, lost jobs, battled health issues, divorced, or struggled financially. In short, we’ve experienced life. But reunions should never be about the ones who have done “really, really well.”

  What does that phrase mean anyway, and who cares? The most money? The biggest house? The most lavish lifestyle? Hardly. Reunions are not about things. They are about people and the delightful discovery that many friendships still run deep after all those years.

  So, as Captain Renault said in Casablanca, “Round up the usual suspects!”

  Be there.

  2. MINGLE. This does not mean hang out at the bar with a beer and wait for people to approach you. Muster up some courage and work the room. Extend the glad hand of fellowship. Ask questions. Talk to someone you don’t remember or didn’t know well.

  Some of the best conversations will result.

  Even though one classmate and I had gone all the way from grade school through high school together, we both admitted we didn’t really remember each other. In a roll call of our elementary teachers, we discovered the only class we ever shared was morning kindergarten. We had a good laugh, and finally, after all these years, got to know each other a bit better.

  3. DO NOT LET THE CLIQUES AND BRAGGARTS GET YOU DOWN. Despite your efforts to mix it up, there will always be the few who hang together, talk only about themselves, and never ask about you. It’s as if they are the featured guests on Larry King Live and you’re Larry. On and on they go about what they’ve achieved, their travels, or the cost of their kid’s private school.