Reunion

Whether my parents intended it or not, my most influential and important extended family, isn't family at all.  We don't share any common genetics, or last names, or great grandparents.

What the first generation shares is common professors, and meals in a shared dining hall and stories from college housing...fraught with mild mischief.  Nine people...some of whom married each other, some never married, some married from "the outside"...went on to form this group.  Over the past 40 plus years, they gathered for parties and  long weekends where they camped at each others houses.  They shared casual get togethers and wove their lives together as tightly as any DNA could have.

Only one person beyond the first generation holds a degree from the college campus that started it all.  The second generation has been dragged brought  back for more than one homecoming and we could tell the folklore of the campus art and even share stories from a magical Pink House.  We are busy bringing up and bringing in the third generation of this family.

This weekend is my 15 year reunion for my college class.  My husband and I met there our junior year.  He lived for two years in an honor house with many men.  I lived with roommates I no longer keep in touch with and then by myself...in blissful heaven for a year.  I spent my college days in the, now seemingly ridiculous, pursuit of athletic dreams.  My teammates and I had lost contact with each other by 1996.

Due to my the influence and mythic importance I put on my parent's friends, I have always had vulnerable spot when it comes to the topic of college friends and my lack there of.

The men from my husband's college house all (nearly all) married women from our college.  The women get together every year.  I don't know if the men do, but they will all be together at the reunion this weekend.  Through the magic of Facebook, I am 'friends' with these women.  Their get togethers make me a little sad...jealous perhaps.  Frustrated that I didn't know what I would be missing out on when I passed on their offers of friendship 15 years prior.

In the end we aren't going to the reunion due to our schedule.  The trip to my home state can only be done so many times in one month and the reunion got cut.  I would have loved to be there.  A decade and a half has healed many insecurities and settled me in my own skin.  I was looking forward to seeing familiar faces again and catching up in person.  I was interested in meeting people I should have met 15 years ago.

Then it hit me as to how it is slightly odd that so much emphasis is placed on these four years of our life.  I decided to cut myself a little slack.  Since 1995, I have been a part of numerous groups with whom I would love to catch up.  I wondered what makes our college years so poignant and holy?  It isn't 'ba hum bug' or even insecurity that asks the question...I just wonder.

I will never have what my parents have with their college friends.  What I have is a person here and a dear one there.  My friends and soul mates are spread out across the country.  Stories and moments scattered and sent.  Memories from Habitat training classes and my work colleagues at my first 'real' job fill me with joy and energy.  I cherish my seminary classmates and perhaps that is where my reunion energy will land.

All of this wistful looking backwards has taught me that friendships take time, cultivation....they don't just happen. When they do, one should take great care with them and be very grateful to be apart of it.  Even if you are in the second generation.

This is a lesson I learned in college.

Um. Yah. Yah.  Be sure to listen to the song as well.