Monday, July 05, 2010

Reunion weekend: Nick gets over-hugged by people he's just met and I wish time would stand absolutely still

I've lost my front door key. I can't find my phone. I still have random sparkles stuck to myself. I'm exhausted and a little teary.

I bet this is how it feels to come down from a three-day cocaine binge.

I'm guessing, because drugs are one of those things - like tons of casual sex or maybe threesomes - that I feel like I ought to have done in my twenties.

I have never been seize-the-day-y enough.

Not, of course, that people were offering me drugs or threesomes on streetcorners or anything. It's not like I was non-seizing left and right.

So.

So Kelli and Russ arrived early Thursday evening, and honestly, I didn't stop laughing until I dropped Kel at the airport this afternoon.

I've long felt that people don't really change as they age - they just become more so. You distill, I suppose.

We're all still who we were in high school - just more. More candid. Funnier. Smarter. Kinder. More experienced and wiser.

More cognizant of the fact that what we had in each other was rare, and the fact that we still have it is precious.

High school for us was a place without cliques, where everyone was accepted, embraced. It was a small school, and a small ex-pat community. You played sports, did theatre, were in the band, the science club, ran track - you did several or all of those things at once.

After high school, most of us went off to our own countries - the countries we were supposedly "from." I learned this weekend how lost so many of us were. We didn't know how to fit in where we were supposed to.

Eventually, we all figured out how to fit, more or less, and how to feel comfortable.

Quite a number of years have passed at this point.

We've been to college, gotten married, divorced, remarried, moved, had kids, bought houses, quit smoking, begun and ended careers, started businesses, lost hair, lost friends, lost parents.

We've grown up. But not apart, astoundingly enough.

Because in our hearts and souls, we are the same.

I always thought it was India that I longed for when I ached to be home, although I wasn't from India. And once my parents left, Delhi wasn't home.

And what I realized this weekend was, it was these people. They were my sense of place and belonging.

This past weekend, I was so very home.

22 comments:

  1. Sophie's Sean7/05/2010 9:14 PM

    I was so glad that you welcomed me into that home. Thank you.

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  2. Sean, you are a gem. It was wonderful spending time with you and I'm so happy you and Soph found each other.

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  3. Oh, my God, that's exactly how I've been feeling all day. Exhilarated and trying to freeze all the memories in my brain and depressed to be home. I remember sort of stepping back at certain points over the weekend and thinking, "I'm so happy to be with these people again. And I feel like I'm the best version of myself when I'm with them." That time really was lightening in a bottle, but I think we recaptured a little bit of it again this weekend. xoxo

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  4. Happy to hear yall had a fantastic weekend full of laughter and new memories. Completely agree that people don't change - they evolve.

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  5. Lisa, I love reading your stories!
    Susan

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  6. You said it so well....very heartfelt and very candid indeed. Thanks again so much for inviting us to your fab place and it was such a pleasure to meet Jordan and Nick.

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  7. Fantastic! Isn't it funny how you can pick up where you left off so easily with good old friends, no matter how much time has lapsed and no matter how much life stuff has happened in between. Yay to that!

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  8. Sean - You are a gem, and I'm so glad you and Soph found each other. It was wonderful meeting you!

    Susan - Oh, I miss you! Let's get together one of these days!

    Ritu - Thank you so much! I was so happy to catch up, and thank you for coming over.

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  9. Glad to hear you had a good time. Memories are what we make them.

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  11. Lisa,

    Once again, you managed to capture an experience so beautifully- perfectly. I'm so glad it was an experience we shared! Seeing friends after so many years and feeling so comfortable is what it's all about! Thank you for planning our end-of-reunion get together at your beautiful pad so there was time to continue recent conversations, share old stories, and laugh! Lots of hugs to you...to Jordan...and to Nick (Just in case he needed one last hug;)

    Emily- representing the Sargent Clan

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  12. red dress! red dress!

    the joy in that photo makes me so happy. I love pictures of people laughing :)

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  13. so much fun! you are so very lucky to have had those as your high school memories. and it sounds like you had a great time catching up with an amazing group of friends.

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  14. Thank you for sharing this with us- what a really wonderful story, and it sounds, lately, like just what you needed.

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  15. love, love the dress! so glad you had fun

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  16. Wow. I mean that. The writing, the experience, the photo and the dress.

    I'm glad it was everything you'd hoped and then some.

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  17. Monique Esselmont7/06/2010 7:07 PM

    I miss you all so much. I soooooo wanted to be there...

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  18. HKW - That's a very nice way to put it. They evolve!

    Miranda - Yes! And it always amazes me! We're a lot older, we have so much life behind us, and yet we were all 15 again (but better versions) for the weekend.

    FoggyDew - Great time. There's always a lot of revisionist history everywhere, but there was so much of one person starting a story and the other finishing it with the exact same memory. Not that everything was unicorns and rainbows in high school, but the shared experience was extraordinary.

    Hi Em! - Thank you for coming over! I was so glad that all of you could make it. It was such a joy to see your whole family! Big hugs to all of you!

    Hillary - Yes! First night, red dress! There are SO many laughing pictures. :)

    K-Tee - I knew it would be fun, but I didn't expect to have such a profound experience.

    Maiden Metallurgist - You are so right. It was exactly what I needed. Exactly.

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  19. I so loved reading that, you have a great talent and you captured how we all felt so beautifully. Even in my crazed state of frenzy all weekend I felt surrounded by comfort, happiness, and a feeling of home. Thanks for writing and posting this - now I can't wait for the next one! (post, that is) :)

    -Eric

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  20. that was beautiful.

    'kinder' was my favourite part of the post.

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  21. Lori Bouzane7/12/2010 5:21 PM

    Lisa.....I am so glad that the "big kids" had just as good a time as the "little kids". In this post you completely captured exactly how I felt and how I think we all felt at the reunion (or for the little kids..the rogue reunion as so many of us from my year couldn't afford the reunion but still all managed to swing it!). I missed Delhi soooo deeply and have dreamt about it so many times over the past decades and realized the same as you..it was the people. After the weekend..Ethan Espie said he felt like he was with family all weekend....and so did I. I laughed so hard I actually had a sore gut for days after. We were blessed to be a part of it. Wish I could have seen you and met Jordan and would have loved to see Justin! Down at Adam's Morgan we had updates of the good time you were having!!

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  22. Lisa....so glad you all had such an awesome time reconnecting, really missed seeing you all. Love seeing the joy and laughter on your faces in the pics and happy you got to be "home" for the weekend. Your blog is so beautifully and succinctly written that it truly captures how we all feel as former AESers. Hope to see you sometime-- Monica Savla

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