She approached me and asked,“do you know who I am?” It was our forty-fifth reunion, and I could not remember who she was.
Later that evening, I opened my copy of our senior yearbook and found her picture and list of accomplishments to be better prepared if I saw her again.
While reviewing my yearbook, I remembered nothing was listed after my name. I was supposed to provide the editors with a list of my activities at Sidney High School. I hadn’t.
Looking back on it now, I remember that I was in the chorus and the drama club, but I do not know the names of the plays or my parts in them. Being a relatively tall and inconsistent tenor, I was always cast as the father figure without a singing part. “Pravda, pravda…it is true” is the one line I remember from my many performances.
A few days after my reunion, I found a copy of my mother’s yearbook online while working on some family history.
She had been raised for many years by her grandmother because her father was lost at sea in a U-boat attack in 1942, and her mother was in Saranac Lake receiving treatment for tuberculosis.
My grandmother was cured, and my mother was reunited with her in 1947.
My mother’s yearbook was called the “Canaras” — Saranac spelled backwards
It indicates that she sang in the Glee Club and was a cheerleader and varsity athlete. She performed in the junior and senior plays and was a member of the Student Council. The editors describe her as “a gay spirit and a kindly heart.”
Her yearbook tells the story of four of the beautiful years my mother spent with my grandmother, who would die just a few years after graduation.
I never thought to ask my mom about her time in high school. Fortunately, she left a record of those special years on page 22 of “The Canaras, 1952.”
I wish I had done the same in 1978.
Finding North 