Reunion

These are my people. More specifically, these are my college people. Not all of them, mind you, although we did attend a small liberal arts university in the woods of New Jersey.

We, my people and I, have been places – London, Amsterdam, Rutland, Las Vegas, assorted diners, bars and athletic fields.

We have done things. Surfed couches. Mixed cocktails. Danced madly. Talked deep into the night. Fell extravagantly in love. Pushed one another to our limits. Wrestled while intoxicated. Spooned. Hiked. Roadtripped. Hooked up. Broke up. Bucked up.

Degrees were earned. Jobs won and lost. People died and babies arrived.

In other words, life: in all of its imperfect perfectness.

And in July, we came back together – in two houses, up a dirt road in Vermont. And in a jam packed, joy-filled 48-hours, this magical band of people filled my belly, mind and heart.

As a writer, I should have more words for those 48 hours, these feelings, than this, but they seem somehow sacred. Perhaps because we are so much older now, and our lives have taken turns and been shaped in ways we can’t know because we are in the midst of them. Because there are deadlines and commitments and responsibilities that could easily keep us apart. Because we know how easy it is to slip from one another’s reach.

Perhaps this is why it’s such an exquisite gift to enter a room of friends you haven’t seen in years, with whom you share time and life and memory – and be embraced, exactly where and as you are.