Reunion Station

     I attended two reunions in the month of June in the space of 7 days or so. One was my wife's 35th High School reunion from the city of Shawnee, Oklahoma. My wife was the instigator, organizer and motivator for this reunion. It was a rousing success, due in a large part to that ubiquitous tool, Facebook. Yes, you can reach out and touch and find high school friends with this wunderkind phenomenon.

     But what is so neat is that I had a great time at her reunion. Though it was a lot of physical work in setting up the three events, I enjoyed meeting and making friends with my wife's old friends. And I use the word, old, in all of it's meaning, as 35 years makes the high school pictures look like folks other than those who showed up. Yet it is who we have become that makes old friends like new friends, and new friends like old. My wife commented on how people have changed but not as much as you would think, and so we all become older versions of our younger selves. I found that I liked the same ones my wife does, or did.

     The other reunion was my Ehlinger family reunion. There was the larger reunion of all of my dad's brothers and sister, and also a smaller reunion of my brothers and sisters. I enjoyed both, but more the smaller family event at my sister's. We spent four hours wandering from room to room, inside and outside, upstairs and downstairs, talking, joking, laughing, hugging those we knew, those we had just met. This was how I grew up, a large family with many relationships that were always in flux. You had to know how to find a quiet place in the middle of many.
     What was common to both is that we wanted to have more of them. To not wait 5, 10 or 20 years, but to meet more often, because life is precious and those we know and love are not around very long, and we need those relationships more than we ever know. Growing older, for me, is coming to know that.