I am in a bittersweet mood, and I blame it on Clifford, though it was not his fault. He was just the unintentional catalyst that put me into my nostalgic state this morning, but to be fair, I would have been in it soon enough anyway.

I met Clifford in September 1960 when I began going to Horace Mann School for kindergarten. His presence filled a room. He was an outgoing, blonde kid who, ironically, had a big dog, though the dog was not red (duh). Everyone in my kindergarten class knew Clifford, even though he was in the other class.

Despite only interacting with Clifford a handful of times in the 50 years since we graduated from Beverly Hills High School, my memories of Clifford remain as bright fixtures in my mind. He was the quarterback on our Horace Mann School flag football team. I was his left end. When we speak, he only mentions the catches I made. Thankfully, he omits talking about the ones I didn’t make. Those were good times and most likely account for why I feel like I still know him well to this day.

As bright as my memory of Clifford is, it is not as bright as my memory of Jill, the girl who I had not met before and whose hand I held 63 years ago when I walked into my kindergarten classroom for the first time. We were not good friends in either elementary or high school, but, hey, holding hands can leave a seriously indelible impression. Just think of the Beatles.

My memory of her may also be enhanced by the chance, yet somewhat pre-ordained, meeting we had in a Berkeley motel parking lot as we were both dropping off our kids to begin their college experience at the University of California.

Over the past couple of weeks, Ellen, another of our Horace Mann School classmates, and Clifford have been reaching out to me to help them organize an informal elementary school meetup the evening before our 50th high school reunion.

Clifford called me this morning to talk about who might or might not be coming to our meetup and to the reunion. When Clifford called, I was chewing on a piece of rye toast while sitting in my den, which due to the ongoing remodeling of our kitchen, is also serving as our breakfast room.

Of course, I put the call on speakerphone when I answered, even though I had the replay of the Amsterdam Formula 1 race blaring from the TV. He either didn’t mind or couldn’t hear it. For some reason, Pam, my saint of a wife who was also in the den, didn’t bother to admonish me to turn it off.

Pam graduated from high school with Clifford and me and was listening to our conversation. When Clifford started saying he was having issues locating many of our Horace Mann classmates and it became clear that neither Clifford nor I could remember a good number of the names of the kids in our class, Pam, being the packrat she is, sprang into action, grabbing my 1969 Horace Mann yearbook off one of the bookshelves in the den and locating whatever lists of contact information she had from our prior reunions. I knew I had the yearbook, and I knew it was somewhere in the den, but it felt like too much work to search for it. It never ceases to amaze me that Pam knows where everything is while I only have a general idea.

I started scanning the yearbook, focusing on each of the 95 faces and names that made up our eighth grade graduating class. The last time I looked at it was probably 10 years ago. My perusal of it at that time did not generate the feelings I was feeling this morning.

I realize it is pretty normal to lose touch with classmates as time goes by, but as I looked and looked, it was quite evident that I had lost touch with over 95% of them. Some had moved away. Sadly, some had passed away. Some had lost interest in being found. Sure, I still speak with a couple of them somewhat regularly. Sure, I interact with a handful of them on social media, and that should count for something, I guess. But those facts did nothing to quelch my feelings, which I think were spawned more by the stark reality of the passage of a great amount of time than anything else.

Every sweet face on that page was filled with youthful energy and the joy of moving on in life. We were still young and generally naive. While we were beginning to grow apart as we aged, we still had way more in common than not. We were early in our march to adulthood, and we couldn’t wait for it to happen.

Well, a lot has happened since then, almost an entire lifetime worth of stuff. Stuff that I am yearning to learn more about, as I think I am finally enough of an adult to make that stuff more meaningful to know.