Reunion

Last week I had dinner with two friends I had last seen fifty years ago. We were teenagers at a summer camp back then, now they are a married couple in their mid 60’s. They had found me through mutual friends. We spent three hours over dinner at the Inn where they were staying in Halifax, on a vacation tour of the Canadian Maritime provinces. Of course they were older, but they looked, talked and acted much the same. They said the same about me.

The story of their life came out in bits and pieces; getting married, having children, various moves and changes of occupation, grandchildren, retirement to a quiet island in Maine, keeping in touch with life long friends. My story was different in detail, but not that much different overall.

By the end of the meal the stories seemed to have been told and for a few minutes we chatted about the state of the world, the weather, the local tourist sites; just an ordinary conversation, as if we were friends who had seen each other the previous day; not half a century ago.

Since that evening I’ve been contemplating the meaning of this experience, this reunion. What does it mean that fifty years of life, theirs and mine, can be encapsulated in a few hours, over a meal?

Last night PBS ran a documentary about Garrison Keillor, who is 67 (as am I). At the end of the film he commented that, when we are young we hope for an extraordinary life, but as we get older we realize that everyone’s life is fundamentally the same; “we all get an ordinary life”.

--dave whitehorn