Essay: Experiencing Reunions Through the Eyes of a Parent

It was our 15th reunion, and my wife, Lucy Guarnera ’09, and I arrived with our two boys — Sammy, 11, and Charlie, 8.

Despite the frenetic atmosphere — or perhaps because of it — Reunions was a great place to take our kids. They were old enough to have some independence, and to be making solid memories, but were still too young to be seized with teenaged self-consciousness. Mom and dad have yet to become total embarrassments, even if we were dressed like tigers or rodeo clowns. Their eyes were still full of wonder, because their eyes weren’t rolling — not yet.

I wasn’t prepared to experience Reunions through the eyes of my children.

Surrounded by uncles, aunties, and other friends, Sammy and Charlie moved around the tents with rare freedom. They seemed suddenly older, as peeks and glimmers of their future, collegiate selves appeared as though tricks of the light. I found Charlie with a soda-filled Solo cup, the rim hanging from the tips of his fingers. He was watching a foosball game and nonchalantly pounding Fanta like he did this every day.

“Hold that cup around the middle. Please?”

Eating untold quantities of cookies and fruit and cheese and crackers and bagels and muffins, our boys moved from reception to reception among a pack of nearly a dozen kids, all children of my former roommates. They took over an entire row at the physics demonstration — standing room only, because everyone in the alumni community is clearly raising nerds. They shouted the right answers about the density of sulfur hexafluoride. And they shouted many perfect locomotives at the P-rade, too.

When we returned home, after a day or two of rehydration and catching up on sleep, I went through a few hundred photos. Judging by their faces, you’d think our kids spent the weekend at Legoland. As I began to upload the best shots into a shared folder, my phone buzzed. Lucy had sent me a link to another set of photos, these from Reunions before the pandemic. Photos from when our babies were still babies.

A photo of Sammy, at 11 months, laughing as he pulled an orange and black hat off Lucy’s head. Baby Sammy at the ultimate Frisbee game. Sammy at six, wearing tiger face paint and pretending to roar, hand in hand with our friends’ kids. A bewildered baby Charlie, being carried down the P-rade route by my roommate Jonathan Keller ’09, whom he calls uncle Jon.

And Sammy and Charlie now, wearing cowboy hats and tiger sunglasses. Sammy in a shirt that says “Whatever” — I bought it for him — and Charlie looking like a party dude from the 1990s.

I wasn’t prepared to experience Reunions through the eyes of a parent.

I realize now that our family will be tracking the passage of time not through school pictures or Christmas mornings, but through Reunions photos. My Princeton nostalgia has unexpectedly refocused on my children. Which is to say, Reunions now makes me think of my kids’ early years. And of their future.

In the lead-up to Reunions, and even while we were on campus, Lucy and I reminded our boys that we don’t care where they go to school (as long as it isn’t Yale). But after three days at Old Nassau, they left extremely motivated to go to college, and to one college in particular.

This isn’t the place to consider the issue of legacy admissions — although, feel free to read between the lines — but even if current policy remains unchanged, it’s still statistically unlikely my children will attend Princeton. And that’s OK. We’ve always told them they don’t need to go to Princeton. But at our 15th reunion, I may have finally meant it.

My boys practically floated home after the fireworks. As I watched them laughing alongside my roommate’s kids, I realized they’ve skipped all the hard parts — the admissions rat race, four years of all-nighters, writing a thesis that never quite made sense — to arrive here, at the best part, spending the weekend with their favorite people in the whole world.

It really doesn’t matter if they go to Princeton — they’ll always be a part of the family.

Sean Rubin ’09 is the author and illustrator of several books for children, including Bolivar, The Iguanodon’s Horn, This Very Tree, and the final two published books in the Redwall series, The Sable Quean and The Rogue Crew.