Reunification

Some things are just too good for me to be able to write about them properly. My recent college reunion weekend is one such thing. It was only two days, but in two days I visited with ten friends...totally apart from the excellent conversations and re-connections I managed through the reunion dinner itself.

I said to my friend I. after she came to visit a few weeks ago that I felt, I don't know, rejuvenated or refreshed or re-set or something after having such a wonderful time with her. And it's really indescribable, what time around good people can do for my outlook on life, the universe, and everything. I get...not lonely, per se, but isolated, sometimes, knowing very few people in my immediate geographic area. I have Himself, and the Squid, and a close friend or two within an hour's drive, my parents within an hour and a half, and my internet friends - but no local community.

Even after eight years in California, I still have more friends in Portland than I do in the whole state down here. Wonderful friends, amazing friends, comfortable friends I don't have to feel like a guest with, or worry about being a host with. I love it. I miss it.

Almost everyone I saw, actually, lives in the area year-round (except friend S, who drove down from Washington just to see me, which was no end of awesome). Which sort of begs the question of why I went for my reunion, anyway, instead of taking a longer weekend another time. The answer to that came to me on Saturday afternoon, as I re-connected with my friend A. A and I were friends from...hmmm, 94/95 on? From our Milton study group with friend K to our late-night drunken Grabble games with his whole household the year after we graduated, A has been a wonderful and essential friend to me. Nobody else is quite like him. Nobody thinks quite like him. Nobody else knows what Oscar Wilde would have said, at any given moment.

Of course, A's been living in Hungary for about five years now, since leaving his doctoral program for greener pastures...which means I last saw him five years ago, at our last reunion. We'd fallen out of touch, the collateral damage of time and distance, & etc. So re-connecting with him was, essentially, the point of the trip qua reunion, as opposed to a more generalized visit-to-the-Northwest. And it was wonderful, which is all I can say about it, and far less than would do it justice.

I also saw four old lovers, three friends' children, two former housemates, and ... okay, no partridge in a pear tree, but I did see a stand-up economist, who was pretty damn funny. I got to have lunch and brunch with dear friends on both days, people I don't see nearly often enough, some of whom used to be so woven into the fabric of my daily life that I still feel their absence regularly. I saw babies I'd never met, some of whom are now Big Kids, and met spouses I'd never gotten the chance to know. I saw friends in their early twenties and friends in their forty- and fifty-mumbles, and caught up with people I hadn't seen in a decade who turn out to live within half an hour of me.

Of course, I packed people into every minute of the trip, and still couldn't see everyone I wanted to. I think I had this strange idea that since the Squid came along, it will be harder to hold onto friendships - and so I tried to see everyone, all at once. I wanted days with everyone I got hours with, hours with everyone I got minutes with. But that's greed, and I count myself lucky to have had the time I did - and twice lucky that the Squid traveled so well and was so amiable about the whole adventure.

I just re-read this, and it's clear to me that I have failed to describe the awesomeness of the weekend, and equally clear that the words will not be forthcoming. I had rambles in the canyon and excellent food, time with the baby and flopping on sofas, beer and coffee and hugs and good conversation and fireworks and friends and everything but sleep. It was, in a word, perfect.