Tag: reunions

Monday – Funday

Credit: @woofknight, Twitter

I’m baaaaack! After spending the weekend at a college friends’ reunion (after three years of not seeing each other), when my one friend got home, she texted that she feels so “rejuvenated”. That really stuck with me. I feel rejuvenated, too, and I didn’t even realize how badly I needed to be rejuvenated. Sometimes you don’t realize how stale you have gotten in certain areas of your life until you get reminded by fresh perspectives – new places, interesting recommendations by trusted friends, and even reminders of facets of your own self, which you had forgotten about until you see them reflected back to you in a good friend’s eyes. Rejuvenation is revitalizing.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Soul Sunday

Good morning. Happy Sunday. Happy Poetry on the Blog Day. We were up until the wee hours last night reminiscing with dear, old friends with whom we reunited with yesterday. Unfortunately my mind is too foggy for poetry making, and I have to get ready for brunch.

Life itself is a good epic poem, going along to the beats and the cadences of our own individual rhythms. Write some poetry today, or live some poetry today. The dictionary says that “poetic” means having a dramatic, sensitive, emotional way of expressing oneself. Live fully. Live poetically.

Are you passing on love, or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Reunited

Happy Birthday to the daughter of my dreams. Dreams do come true!! I love you infinitely.

This weekend my husband and I are visiting with, and reconnecting with a couple who were part of the “neighborhood gang”, when we were raising young families. Our family, and this couple and their family, lived in the same lovely locale in North Carolina, where we all raised our children, for the span of about a decade, over a decade ago. There were probably about ten families, or so, who were part of this core group and we did play groups, and book clubs, and happy hours, and we spent endless hours together at the neighborhood pool. We took trips together – camping with the kids (or more specifically, girls weekends without the kids, while the dads went camping with the kids – there were always lots of ‘interesting’ stories and photos after these events. Thankfully everyone came out of it all, alive and well, in order to relay the stories). There was also a couples’ getaway to the Caribbean, and an annual families’ trip to the mountains to cut down our Christmas trees – a favorite tradition for all of us, despite the creepy Santa, in the cabin at the foot of the mountains, who made everyone, kids and parents alike, more than a little leary. (My adult kids, to this day, can still perfectly mimic this Santa’s high-pitched, eerie whiny voice, “And what do youuuuuu want for Christmas, little one?”) Our children all attended the same, sweet, close-by elementary school, and we parents all had the peace of mind of knowing that on any given day, there was likely at least one extra set of eyes and ears and a loving, caring heart around our children, at any point in time, as many of us volunteered there at the school, throughout the years. It was honestly an idyllic place, and almost a “tribal” way to raise young children, and not too far off from the Norman Rockwell version of my softened memories and descriptions.

But as life inevitably rolls out and goes on, there were moves, and divorces, and squabbles, and aging kids scattering in all different directions, wherever their individual interests and activities and educations were taking them. Bye and bye, this group of young, energetic, hopeful parents of many, many beautiful, quickly growing and expanding offspring, mostly dispersed and moved on. Most of these relationships, at least for my husband and I, are now not much more than an annual Christmas card exchange. (I am not much one for Facebook and Instagram. I am a look forward person. Sometimes the past holds too many knots of nostalgia, that keep me all tangled up. . . I have learned that it is better for me, to stay clear of those knots.)

So, I am entering this weekend with anxious trepidation and overall excitement. I mentioned this to my local friends and to my hair stylist, and to my son’s girlfriend, and everyone had the same response: “Oh you’ll probably just start right where you left off! It will seem like you have never been apart.”

I hope so. I believe so. But no matter what happens this weekend, I’ll never forget what we all shared together in times past. My stomach is in knots already. But these knots of nostalgia and excitement and connection, I’ll hold on to for now. Sometimes glimpsing a little bit into your past, reminds you of all of the qualities of strength, and love, and hope, and the ability to connect with others, that you have always possessed in yourself – qualities that you have to bring with you, as you create your own broad, unseen, unknown future. Looking over the treasure of what you shared in the past, reminds you that fond memories are treasures that never go away.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Grand Memories

Over a decade ago, some friends of mine from college and I, decided to try a little experiment. We were in our late thirties and we had well-established families. We all had at least three kids (my family had the biggest family, consisting of four children). We thought that it could be neat and fun, to attempt a shared family vacation. We imagined renting a huge, rambling beach house, taking turns making meals, picking restaurants, sharing laughs, fun, memories and getting a slowed-down chance to really get to know each other’s babies and husbands, a little bit better. Going into it, I knew that this particular trip was either going to be absolutely fantastic or extremely hellish, nothing in between. Our family was accustomed to taking our own private family trips. We already always had enough chaos going on between the six of us. I couldn’t fully fathom what adding eight more adults and twelve more kids into the mix, was going to bring, other than knowing that it would be either exponentially great or exponentially horrible. It turns out that the trip was FABULOUS! Exponentially.

We had such an amazing time. My favorite memory of that long ago get-together, is all twenty-six of us, combing the beach at night, with head lamps and flashlights and buckets, foraging for night crabs. Some of us got cut by pincers (probably deservedly) and some of us were never agile enough to catch a crab (me and some of the babies), but the merriment, the excitement, and the in-the-moment joyousness of the event is something that I will never, ever forget. The kooky babysitters who we hired, making shell and sea grass jewelry with the young ladies of the group, my friend who grew up in Baltimore teaching us the proper way to truly get your money’s worth out of getting all of the meat (and I mean ALL) out of a boiled crab, and the early morning jaunts to the decadent doughnut shop, are all part of a wonderful collection of recollections, that are kept in a treasured, safe corner of my still solid memory bank. The evening card games ended each night in hilarity (and even some tension), as all of us adults were a little more hyper-competitive than any of us ever wanted to admit. Then, even later into the night, one of us couples would steal off into the night, climbing the dunes, under the romantic moonlight, knowing that our babies were safe and sound, with trusted, loving friends. It was a beautiful experience. The only negative thing that I brought back from that trip was that one of my friends introduced my children to peanut butter and marshmallow fluff sandwiches. I was never able to avoid the jars of marshmallow fluff at the grocery store after that trip, without all of my children chorusing together, in loud begging and whining tones, for us to purchase at least one jar. My house was forever-filled with extremely sticky, dirty fingerprints after that vacation. And it was totally worth it.

Unfortunately, we were never really able to completely recapture that multi-family beach experience again. The following years included the recession, out of state moves, marriage break-ups, friendship shake-ups, and the inevitable over-taxed schedules of maturing families. Our family, having the eldest of the children and having been the ones who moved the furthest away, was never able to be part of some of the smaller get-togethers that happened after that wonderful inaugural event. So, earlier this month, when one of my girlfriends offered up her house, for a New Year’s Eve reunion of this wonderful group of friends and our families, we jumped on it! The kids are all older now, mostly in their late years of high school and college. Only my two youngest kids will be coming along on the trip with my husband and I, this go around. Some of the other kids of the group have to stay home for work obligations, as well. Us parents have a few more wrinkles and a lot more gray hair (and in some cases, less hair) than we had on that long-ago beach trip, over ten years ago. Still, I no longer have to question which way this trip is going to go. This time, I already know that it is going to be fabulous, and I have an empty vault in my memory bank, just waiting to be filled up with the best treasures of all – grand memories, the kind of memories that make up a person’s life.

Big Balls

So, I did something really strange this week. (perhaps regular readers are used to me doing strange things) An electrician doing work in our house, was listening to the radio and AC/DC was playing. The song was “Big Balls.” This triggered a memory.

For those of you who are not familiar with “Big Balls”, here are the lyrics to the chorus:

I’ve got big balls
I’ve got big balls
And they’re such big balls
Dirty big balls
And he’s got big balls,
And she’s got big balls,
But we’ve got the biggest balls of them all!

The memory that got triggered by this interesting song is that the first time that I heard the “Big Balls” song is when I was introduced to it, late at night, at a sleepover, when I was in elementary school. We were giggling a lot, listening to it, and I am sure that my eyes were the size of saucers but I probably pretended that I already knew the lyrics. What bad-ass little kids, my friends and I must have been! Ha!

So, I thought about the friend who hosted the sleepover. She was one of my best friends in elementary school but we lost touch after that, as we never went to the same schools after elementary school. I remember her being daring, brutally honest and smart as a whip. Now, I don’t go on to Facebook very often, so I decided to just “Google” her name and the first site to come up, was her professional website. Turns out that my elementary school friend is currently a successful tax attorney in Chicago. Even though we haven’t seen each other in 40 years, I immediately recognized the piercing, “see right through you” expression on her face, on her professional, attractive, lawyer-ly picture that came with her bio.

Now, here comes the crazy part. I emailed my friend, at her law firm email address and I entitled the email “Blast from the Past.” I admitted, in my email, that the reason that she came to my mind was because of the “Big Balls” song. I gave a little blurb about my life and I asked how she was doing, hoping that she remembered me and then I sent it before I rationally thought about how weird and desperate and stalker-like the email could come across. (and I sent it to a lawyer . . . )

And then I waited. And then I started thinking rationally and feeling uncomfortable about the whole thing. I mean, people expect you to reach out on venues like Facebook and Instagram and Linked In, but sending a random email to someone you haven’t had contact with, in over 40 years, to their place of employment, discussing a song called “Big Balls”, started to seem a bit “out there”, even for me, the lady who doesn’t embarrass all that easily.

So then I started rationalizing. I allowed myself this crazy blip. This was perhaps, just an unfortunate lack of judgment. I have been very stressed, having my house swarming with workers and dust clouds. I’m probably in some kind of mild midlife crisis. I miss my kids. . . even the kids who still live here. (those of you with teenagers, know what I mean)

I had just finished reading a great book, a thriller, and I got to thinking that even if I didn’t hear back from my elementary school friend, I could turn this whole scenario into an excellent start of a psycho-thriller novel. A bored housewife reaches out on a whim to an old, intriguing friend, who still lives on the edge (remember she’s the one who introduced me to “Big Balls” when we were probably only nine or ten years old) who ends up working for a “law” firm, which secretly does espionage work for the government or the mob or the Russians. And somehow the bored housewife innocently gets involved in all of the intrigue, and has to outsmart the government (easy) or the mob or the Russians (less easy and more dangerous). I realize that this makes for a great premise of a best-selling novel. (and someone out there who is better at writing fiction than me, should definitely steal the idea – it has Hollywood written all over it) Anyway, I started getting overwhelmed thinking about all of the research and fiction writing classes, a book like this would entail, when I noticed that I had a new email message.

It was from my friend, of course. And she remembered me! And she was thrilled to hear from me! And she was glad that I didn’t look for her on Facebook because she, like me, has dropped off of that scene for the most part, too. The best part of the email was that she had recently heard a different AC/DC song (Dirty Deeds) and when she heard that song, she said that she thought about our fifth grade picnics and she reminded me of a few more people that were good childhood comrades who I had long forgotten about. She laughed about us listening to “Big Balls” at her house and she said while she doesn’t remember the instance, she now realizes that it was “wildly inappropriate”. (her words) I thought about that and I thought that probably a less “wildly inappropriate” song would not have stuck in my memory and I would not have likely reached out to her, forty years later and experienced some really nice email exchanges and fond laughs and impressions, about shared childhood memories.

I think that this is how the Universe works. The Universe does not know time. The Universe does know that “wildly inappropriate” can be used in wildly appropriate ways to bring joy and remembrance and connection to people, perhaps when they need those feelings the most. At the very least, I don’t regret my “Big Balls” decision to email my long, lost friend.

Happy Reunion

Watching Game of Thrones last night was like going to a big, happy reunion, getting reacquainted with a bunch of people from your past. (In the case of Game of Thrones, there was also a major feeling of relief – oh, yay, Jorah, Theon, Gendry – that’s right! You are still alive! Hooray!) Reunions, when you haven’t seen familiar people in a long, long time, are always joyful. You find that you are even happy to see the “less than savory” characters, because of the familiarity of your shared history. There’s been enough time and distance to soften the level of annoyance that person brought to your life and if you are honest, the annoyance that you may have brought to their life, as well.

Our two youngest children sat down with us to watch the start of the final season of Game of Thrones. They are not the GOT addicts that their parents are, so they had only seen a sprinkling of episodes. Other than what they heard anecdotally from us and their friends, they had no idea what was going on.

“You can watch with us but you can’t talk and ask questions while the show is on. Understood?” was my very serious proclamation before the show began and while HBO was ceremoniously teasing us with a countdown to the beginning of the final season.

Of course, throughout the show, I made several lively comments, as I joyfully recounted the history of the various characters to my children. They looked at each other knowingly, but dutifully kept quiet throughout the viewing of the episode. I must have used the word “remember” 18,000 times to my husband, as an old familiar face would pop up on the screen and we would try to recount what had happened to that particular character throughout the history of the Game of Thrones TV extravaganza. My only disappointment was, just like the weekend, the show was over way, way too fast. I had to check the clock to really be sure that we got our full hour’s worth.

“I was eating in a Chinese restaurant downtown. There was a dish called Mother and Child Reunion. It’s chicken and eggs. And I said, “I gotta use that one.” – Paul Simon

“Every parting gives a foretaste of death, every reunion a hint of the resurrection.” – Arthur Schopenhauer