Build Grow Move Build Grow Move

Reunions Magazine has just quoted part of a column I wrote about a mini-reunion with my college pals. Only thing is they have me down as a columnist for the Norwich (CT) Bulletin whereas in fact I am a Columnist for the World in the sense that my little words go far and wide, which is a great source of satisfaction for me even if there’s no money in it. (350 papers in Massachusetts alone have access to my column and many of them use it. My compensation? $15 a week.)But never mind that. Here’s what the Reunions issue labeled November/ December/January 2010 quoted from that piece. It was kind of the big finish:

And in the end this reunion seemed to be just what any school reunion should be: a field trip of the imagination to the time when we would gather in small groups to joke and commiserate and tell fond semi-mocking stories about our families, who turned out not to seem so crazy after all when compared to other people’s families; to a time before we were tied in tight to this world by the cords of love and obligation; to a time when we believed – really believed – that Time would never touch us.

Ah but Time touched us all right. Time turned us and turned us, forcing us to grow as the chambered nautilus grows. That little creature inhabits one ‘room’ of his delicate shell, grows, builds a new, larger room, moves into it, grows, builds a new, larger room, moves into that, etc. until he has that lovely circular condo whose image we see on all the exercise equipment. (I bet on some level you also know the poem about this creature by the famous Oliver Wendell Holmes if you’ll just reach back far enough in memory. “Build more stately mansions O my soul!” etc., remember? The whole thing is here, if you want to have a look.You’ll also see the nautilus's shape in this picture I took of the stairs inside the lighthouse at Pemaquid Point in Maine which we visited during our three days together. We hiked clear to the top, clambered up into the place where the beacon is and clambered down again. These were once my best friends in the world, Vicki and Cathy and Elizabeth, Virginia, Susan and Judy and in many ways they still are that. A seventh pal, called Lynne, couldn’t make it this time but I think of  her every day – not just because she was and still is  so  beautiful but because she taught me by example that even if you feel all sad and weird you can still by God get up off your fanny and do your work. (Lynne at an earlier mini-reunion on Rattlesnake Hill, NH. For more on that experience go to Elizabeth's website here)