Spent time this summer on the East Coast with a group of friends from college. Not like a college reunion, but something far more intimate and powerful and with the hidden magic of not being a batch of friends from one year’s graduating class alone. Indeed, four of us came from one class, two each from two other years, and I was the sole representative of my class. This is what colleges and Universities miss when they set up reunions. I suppose, due to logistics, that the university has to schedule by the class. But those formal reunions don’t cut it.
We left our spouses at home, and any kids who might still be about. This was our time, when we could truly pay attention to each other.
We have all become adults more or less, though a lot of time together was spent teasing, recalling old tricks and making up new ones. (Think of mature ideas, like substituting burlap for a friend’s towels in her bathroom.) We also spent hours talking over the extreme range of experiences the intervening years between our graduations and this summer brought. We graduated in the 1970’s and early 1980’s, so a respectable amount of time has passed. A range of careers, marriage and children if they happened, we talked over all the apparently simple things that make up living.
But the reason I write of this isn’t to share the particulars of my own friend group. I want to make a case for you considering meeting up with your past, if you haven’t for a while. I’m humbled and delighted by the company of these friends, and the time we have managed to share, helps and supports us all. I hope you can have a like experience.
robinwinter 