Barring the unforeseen, by the time this is posted we are ensconced in a house overlooking the Pacific Ocean near Yachats, Oregon.
It is the eighth edition of a biennial reunion that has been dubbed the Roundup of the Usual Suspects. Unlike that first gathering, we are approaching this iteration without trepidation
The first roundup was almost happenstance. It brought together for the first time in decades four couples of us who had been close friends in our relative youth in St. Petersburg, Fla.
When we first became friends, we were all early in our careers and our married lives. We enjoyed being together, and our entertainment often consisted of dinner at someone’s house and watching the children play. We didn’t have any pretensions, because we didn’t have anything to be pretentious about.
Two of the couples left Florida in the early ’70s. We all stayed in touch, swapping Christmas cards with the usual notes about the children and vacations. Some of us had seen each other now and then in the intervening years – a quick dinner on a business trip, that sort of thing – but those contacts had been fleeting. Even the two couples who remained in the St. Petersburg area lived far enough apart that they saw each other only occasionally.
The reunion idea was born when Tom and Jean, both of whom still lived in St. Petersburg, ran into each other. Tom mentioned completing what was to become his and Shirley’s retirement home in the Rockies, and Jean said that would be a great place to get the old gang together.
And it happened. Everyone was interested enough, or curious enough, to work it into their schedules.
As we drove westward from Colorado Springs for that first gathering, I wondered whether we would still find common ground when we hadn’t been together for more than 25 years. We were about to find out whether it was best to leave those glossy old memories unsmudged by current reality. Later, the others would admit having the same questions.
We should not have worried.
We were the last to arrive, and the others were gathered at the table eating chili. We slid into our seats and joined in.
Within minutes the intervening years had evaporated. I looked around the table. We all showed a little wear and tear, but we’d earned it. And in the important things, we were still the people we had been.
We weren’t alike way back then, not by a long shot, but the things we shared in common were more than enough to let us accept the things that made us different, and we were comfortable with each other’s shortcomings.
The reunion was enough to remind us that those early friendships are special treasures. It also was enough to tell us that we didn’t want to wait 25 years for another get-together, so we decided to make it a biennial affair.
Since then we’ve met by the ocean in California, on Lake Martin in Alabama, in the mountains of Tennessee, at Lake Tahoe, on Mount Desert Island in Maine, and, two years ago, in St. Petersburg. We called that gathering the return to t he scene of the crime.
All of us have hit a few bumps along the way, but on the whole we have been very lucky. We are still here, still married to the same spouses. We have raised our children and have been rewarded with grandchildren.
But, for a week or so, we will be in our 20s again. When we are together now, as it was then, we are all individual people, not someone’s son or daughter, not someone’s business associate or boss. We are important to each other because of who we are, not because of our title or economic standing.
And if our week together had a soundtrack, it would be filled with laugher.
That is a wonderful thing to keep.
The writer can be contacted at billatthelake@google.com
