Oops, We Did it Again

We did it again. Approximately thirty of my sorority sisters and I morphed into our eighteen-year-old-selves for the reunion weekend. We have discovered our Fountain of Youth. It only lasts for about thirty-six hours once a year, but that is enough for us; we’ll take it. The transformation from fifty-something to eighteen happens the minute one walks through the door of our log country cabin. Squeals of recognition, hugs, tears, and laughter are the tonic.

Women arrive on Friday evening made up, coiffed, and dressed to the nines, unsure about fitting in – “Will I know anyone?” “Will they remember me?” Soon, Fawn’s laugher fills the room, Johanna’s southern accent caresses our ears, and we are back in the sorority house, and it is 1975. Someone has disco music booming from an I-Pod (my, how technology has changed), scrapbooks and Kodachrome snapshots are spread out on every surface, and beer, wine and tequila begin to flow – SPLASH, someone falls (or is pushed or jumps) into the swimming pool. We are all eighteen.

We’ve seen divorce, and illness, and death. We’ve seen marriages, and births, and graduations. We discuss diets, and hair color, and wrinkle cream. By Saturday morning no one bothers to put on make up or fix their hair. We are who we are. We are eighteen year old college girls. We can see past the thirty years, we can see through the wrinkles and the under eye puffiness to the real person.

On Sunday we hug and cry. It is time to go back, back to the world of responsibilities where we are fifty-something, a bit overweight, and where we see a colorist on a regular basis. But we each take with us the memory of that eighteen year old and perhaps we will laugh a little more, or fall into a swimming pool this year, while we await our next appointment with our Fountain of Youth. See you next year, girls.