Book Ends

Yesterday, two events converged to surprise me with how much time has elapsed in my life trajectory:  we met an old college friend for dinner in a Florida beach town halfway between us, and I saw a Facebook post that was planning events for a 35 year high school reunion in the morning.

When I saw the Facebook post, I did a quick count.  Could it be 35 years?  Wasn't it just last year that I realized with a shock that it had been 30 years since I graduated from that school?

Nope it's been 35 years.  And it's been about 30 years since I saw our old college friend.  Once we were close, in the way that you can be close when you live in a single gender dorm that has a curfew when the other gender must leave and everyone gathers in a common area, shares food, and talks about important stuff into the wee, small hours of the morning.

In the last few days, as we've been arranging our dinner details, I've been trying to remember what we talked about in those late night sessions of so long ago.  Once, I could have reconstructed those conversations with some accuracy.  Now I am startled to realize I have no idea what we talked about.

I can guess.  It was probably our yearnings about what futures we wanted for ourselves.  It was probably a dissecting of the past.  We might have discussed things that happened in class, but maybe not--most of us weren't in class together.

Last night, we didn't talk about those long ago conversations.  We talked about what had happened to us in the intervening 30 years.  I was somewhat aghast to realize how much I had either lost track of or ever known.  We're Facebook friends, but last night reminded me that Facebook has some limitations.

Meeting once every 30 years has limitations too.  On the way home, I thought of all the questions I wish I had asked, all the follow up I could have done, the in-depth analysis that our dinner didn't really allow.

I thought of the old Simon and Garfunkle song, "Old Friends."  Last night, we didn't "sit on a park bench like book ends"--but after dinner, we did sit on Adirondack chairs painted in tropical colors to finish our reunion.

I find myself missing those late night conversations in our long ago dorm.  At the time, I both knew and didn't know what a rare opportunity we had.