On Friday afternoon, right before I left to pick up Shep from camp, the phone rang.
It was my high school friend Jessica, whom I haven’t seen in person since our twenties, although we’ve communicated via email and Facebook. When talk of our class reunion started to surface, I told her she was welcome to come stay at our place, but it sounded like she wasn’t going to make it.
Until Friday afternoon, when I picked up the phone, and Jessica said, “I think I want to come to the reunion.” Which would be a perfectly normal phone call if the reunion weren’t happening the following night and she didn’t live thousands of miles away.
I gave her my two cents worth (COME!) and offered up our basement as lodging. An hour later she called back and said the whole family was boarding a plane in a matter of hours. I’m such a planner that I adore when others are completely spontaneous. Hooray!
In between the call and their arrival, I hosted another high school friend, Emily, and her family for dinner. Emily has not changed ONE BIT, and I mean that in the best possible way. Tom and I hung out with them for most of the reunion events—it was so good to have such fine company.
At midnight, our house guests arrived. Jessica is exactly the same, and I remembered why we spent all that time hanging out back in the day. Odie and Tom immediately fell into talking about tools and workshops, and they even moved all the wood from the freshly chopped down trees the next day. Their kids, Neely and Beck jumped right in with our kids and never looked back. (Have you seen those babies? SCRUMPTIOUS.)
The reunion itself was precisely what I expected it to be. Most people were doing great and seemed genuinely excited to be back in the company of those with whom they’d spent many years. Tom, Odie, Emily’s husband Mike, and another friend’s wife attempted to sneak into the Class of ’89 photo, but got kicked out. We later staged their own photo (above).
By far the best part of the weekend was reconnecting with those few close friends. I adore that we were able to pick up right where we left off, and our children and partners just jumped in and followed suit. I lobbied hard for some folks to come live in our back yard, but so far no one seems to be biting. In the meantime, I need to figure out how to fold the continent in half and make visits more doable.