Monday Memory: The Reunion

November 5, 2007

We used to have one every year: the Reunion. I believe the Reunion started in the fall of 1989, when Randy and I had been married about six months. Most of our friends were still in college, but some of us had graduated. The first of The Group had moved away (that was Lauren, the first woman on the left, and her husband and kids). So we began meeting every autumn at a different spot. The only requirement was that the location had cabins which could house a bunch of us. Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Missouri, Indiana, Georgia: the Reunion rotated every year. And got bigger every year, as we added spouses and children. Jesse was the fourth child added to the Group. Chelsea (the little girl above) is now in college, and there are 18 additional kids born just to the folks at this particular reunion (and a bunch of spouses, as well). The particular Reunion pictured above was in 1994 at Toestrings Campground on Watts Barr Lake here in Tennessee.

I'm not sure when the Reunion began to falter, but eventually there came a year when it just didn't happen. A couple of years we had a modifed reunion--with only four or five families represented--but we've even dropped that in these last five years. I never thought a year would go by without seeing some of these wonderful people, but actually two or three years have passed since we've seen some of our closest college friends.

But this is what I think: we are all in the same season of our lives. We are filled to overflowing with children and jobs and just basic maintenance. One of these years we will have to rent out a dozen cabins for the Reunion, because it's likely some of us will be grannies by then. We won't be thinking so much about how big our hair was and why were we all wearing plaid. We'll be reveling in this life, in each other, in our memories, and in these amazing people we've raised. That will be a Reunion to remember.