For our 50th reunion booklet, the editor, Gladys Roberts Thomas, asked each member of the Class to summarize her life in 250 words. “That’s less than five words a year!” one classmate quipped. Nevertheless, 101—or 88 per cent—rose to the challenge

Above each biographical sketch, there is a tiny photograph scanned from the ‘56 yearbook by our web mistress, Norma Sedgewick Rockel, showing the author’s face with every hair around it neatly smoothed in the fashion of fifties. On the right, a color photograph of that same face today, with white—or dyed—hair flying free.

We rejoice in this evidence of our liberation, but we also love the faces of those girls who were about to plunge into their endlessly surprising lives. And we relate to them instantly—and therefore to each other—after half a century.

LOOKING BACK NOW, HOW DO WE THINK BRYN MAWR HELPED US?

One classmate writes: “Bryn Mawr added to the confidence my immigrant family and excellent high school had already instilled—allowing me to attempt virtually anything—not everything successfully—but enough to make life very satisfying.”

Another says: “Bryn Mawr is my umbrella against the uncertainties of the world. Best of all is the rainbow, the small band of classmates, roommates, sisters of the heart, who can always be depended on to cheer, chide, mourn, giggle, hoot, rejoice or just be there.”

Bryn Mawr encouraged us to look hard at the world around us and keep our eyes trained on the gap between what is and what might be. One classmate with this disquieting habit writes:

“Looking back on the scientific and technological wonders of the 20th Century, I feel sorrow that governments cannot master the art of peaceful coexistence; that the earth’s resources are not targeted to alleviate suffering; that global education is not focused on controlling population growth and preserving the environment. Shame augments sorrow…. I dream that a new Eleanor Roosevelt will emerge, become our first woman president and restore our national purpose. I have not seen such a candidate but continue to hope.”

AND WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED SINCE GRADUATION?

That we can adapt to change—and Lord knows we’ve seen changes—and that learning is a lifelong undertaking. One of us, who nursed her husband for six years before his death, writes: “I’ve learned a lot about love and grieving and am now trying for a good balance in my life.” That balance includes, for her, travel to far-flung places and time with her grandchildren. For others it includes falling in love with the harpsichord after decades at the piano—or mentoring at-risk teenagers—or abandoning life in the city to take up sheep farming.

Whatever course we choose, most of us are struggling to refocus our lives as we proceed through this extra helping of time that the lucky ones in our generation have been given—thanks largely to modern medicine.

For us now “luck” translates as “reasonably good health.”

As we move into largely uncharted seas, we are navigating by instinct, mostly, and seem to be doing a fairly good job. As the time ahead grows shorter, several say, “Every day seems like a wonderful gift.” One then apologizes for “sounding like Pollyanna—but I think I’ve come to terms with my life and aging and find that a positive attitude helps me negotiate this stage of life.”

This attitude is shared by another recent retiree who enjoys two or three trips abroad each year and says that “as long as there is breath and a reasonably functioning skeletal structure, I am looking forward to more…. In my gut, I know that there is no armor against fate, and yet—expectations and hope persist.”

There is no way to summarize the idiosyncratic, sometimes heart-wrenching, and often searingly honest reflections of my classmates. But if I had to name one quality as source of the vitality coursing through their essays it would be “curiosity.” Virtually insatiable curiosity. That gift given to us at birth, which the Bryn Mawr experience nourished, trained and expanded.

In sum, I believe, “Curiosity keeps these cats alive!”