November 14, 2012 - Counting My Blessings; Fifteen Years in Remission

 

 

Chungos Endless Connection Reaffirmed 41 1/2 years later!!!

Five freshman girls in a Catholic high school in 1968 found themselves unexpectedly striving toward maturity together in Sister Judith's creative writing class in the trendy "Model School's Program" at St Pius X in Downey, California. Initially shy expressions on paper evolved into a deep interconnectedness and courageous risk to become "Chungos," friends for life, caregivers of one another and stimulus for growth and change. Don't bother to look up the word. We made it up and it's meaning in any culture other than our own is irrelevant. As is intended, I think, high school hopes and promises unfolded into budding adulthood. New dreams took priority. Love, life, lessons, and loss pushed those tender connections into the background of our young adult consciousness. Forty one and half years ago we graduated high school; that was the last time the Chungos were all together. Until now.

I'm not really sure how it all started. I kept meaning to ask, but we were having too much fun for me to get around to it. A couple of months prior to our "re-union", I came home from work to a telephone message from KathyD and an e-mail from Shelly. KathyD and Shelly!!! I hadn't communicated with them in more years than I could remember. They were wondering about all of us getting together for a couple of days. Despite five busy mid-life women's schedules we easily picked a weekend (the end of October) and a place to stay. Of course it had to be by the home of our youth-soul, the sea. But little did I imagine that this would be the view from the "back porch" of our domicile together! I guess we've come a ways from the humble rickety beach house we scraped  together enough money to rent for a week between our sophomore and junior years in high school.  Clearly, the place did not really matter. The Chungos were going to be together again!

  

Claudia, Shelly, and Julia taking a look at some photographs. We traversed many years and so much experience through pictures old and new. We shared writings ranging from the intensity of our stumbling innocence through Julia's published novel. We laughed. We laughed a lot! We cried just enough. Our hearts had never left one another's company, though we may have forgotten who sat there with us through it all.

"Yes, time will melt into memory,
muddled images highlighted by sharp emotion.
There is no forgetting this moment my Chungos.
We are etched into one another's hearts
by the acid intensity of this that we share.
Wounds heal, scars soften, love persists
-and so as we move into this unknown,
take comfort in knowing
we are forever what we have promised
to one another." Hodge, 1970
  

Getting into the kayak was a brave act for some, a familiar pleasure for others. Kathy's smile reflects the comfortable slippage into connectedness that thrilled our time together. It was effortless, our reunion, although the tremendous tension of 41 1/2 years of life could hardly be contained. We are who we are...and no one, not one of us, questioned that right, a permission we promised to one another so many many experiences ago.

"Let's put the depression away in a little box and save it for when we get bored with happiness. Let our smiles be contagious instead of our fears. Watchout world, here we come! We'll be filled and the emptiness will go away and take the loneliness with it. We are hodgdorfjurcumardy Chungos. We are." Kathy D, 1969

 

 

Shelly and I coasting on the water. We learned that we each have three kids and four grandchildren that we love dearly, that we've both faced the fire of life-threatening cancer and its' equally burning treatments, that we cherish each moment, including this one together.

"My soul weeps as I weep.
I whisper and my soul pounds.
In sorrow I am joined with my friends
(and tears mingle).
Our cries join for the one purpose
of being.
Being alive.
In the black night our bodies are hidden
but our souls touch
a night that is....
forever."   Shelly, 1969

 

We prepared the most delicious meals together, all of us amazingly content with healthy, tasty, colorful food and good wine. It was all so easy. While some cooked, others locked heads together telling stories. Then the story-tellers cleaned up. No stress. Truly, absolutely no stress. We went out to eat once at this wonderful cafe by the ocean. We got the waiter to take our picture. Happy satiated friends!

 

Claudia and I ran out to submerse ourselves into the cool exhilarating comfort of the Mother! I am rarely so happy as when my body is soothed by the salt water. So fun to have my Chungo diving at my side. 

Oh yes! We are both very happy ladies, bathed in the healing waters.

"You and I are like the sea and the sand
-shifting our direction day by day-
but always close enough to say hello" Claudia, 1970

 

This is one of my favorite moments. Five determined (yet somehow uncertain) girls grown into five wonderful (still strong and vulnerable) women, moved into unity once more with the sea and the sand and open hearts. 

 

 

Did I say we laughed a lot? We laughed a lot. Staging a photograph is as funny more than four decades later as it was back then! I love these women with all my heart. And will probably be processing for quite some time how it is that we were so gifted to have this treasured time together again. If we had been asked all those years ago, every one of us would have proclaimed that we would be Chungos forever. Then life happened. Lots of life. We lost touch to varying degrees. But we were right. We were right all along. 

 

"On the day before we go...
I've felt it coming. So have you.
For every once in a while
I catch a tear in your throat, a hand on your mouth.
And we know it's coming.
Long talks with our ocean cannot change it
and I understand why you're afraid.
You with every color of eyes and sun-browned skin realize the end is here.
We must go one last time
down the alley, through the gate.
I've felt the sadness even in our sea
on this day before we say good-bye...." Julia, 1969

As we hugged and kissed and let the tears fall, we agreed that we would not (could not, really, which made us laugh again) wait another 41 1/2 years to touch hand to heart in honor of the heart to soul commitment of Chungos forever!   

"The Poetry Beachouse 1968" (at least that's what it says on the back of one of these old photographs I found ). I can't name everyone here, and not all Chungos are in the collage, but you get the idea...