Old Friends

Stephen Sondheim nailed it in his lyrics to a song from "Merrily We Roll Along" called "Old Friends."

So, old friends
Fill me in slow, old friends
Start from hello, old friends
I want the when, where and how

Old friends do
Tend to become old habit
Never knew
How much I missed you till now

It was a warmish day in late September when I moved into the dorm at Michigan State University to begin my freshman year. My roommate was a friend from high school and the rest of our floor was filled with strangers. Strangers, I might add, whom we would come to know well in the communal bathroom/showers located in the middle of the floor.

It was the fall of 1969 and for the next four years we would see tremendous change in the world. Maybe it always was changing -- but now we were aware, although I don't think so aware then as to understand what all the things occurring in our lives meant than in the way we can from the perspective of hindsight.

During our time, there were protests for the Vietnam War, peace rallies, Kent State, Watergate, Women's Liberation. Things that we look back as pivotal now were just the nightly news back then.

LeAnne and Jeanie in wigs, Barb and Carol

It wasn't long after moving in that I met my next door neighbor, Barb, and made new friends down the hall, including Carol and LeAnne. None of us had known each other before and only Carol and I had the same major, theatre, one she would eventually change. I was an only child, unused to living in a crowd. All the others had siblings. We were from Kalamazoo and Detroit and Lansing. We were all naive and we were all OK with that. Not that we didn't do fun college things, but we weren't the rowdy kids. I don't think any of us wanted to disappoint our families.

We spent two years in the dorm together and by junior year, moved into an apartment, an arrangement we would continue as seniors. And yes, we had jolly good times as most college kids do. We ate on the cheap (my mother was horrified when we ate for $5/week each that first semester in our new apartment. We discovered macaroni and cheese. So did our hips. Well, mine did.) We went to football games with "hot chocolate" -- a mix in a thermos that I don't recall had any chocolate included. We saw each other through boyfriends, bad times and good times. We weren't nerdy but no one was going to make us homecoming queen (though Carol could have won it hands down, as nice as she was beautiful).

Jeanie, Barb and LeAnne with Carol behind us.

We never had a fight. Imagine -- living in close quarters, two of those years in apartments together, and never fighting. We had our own friends and our together friends. Sometimes they mixed, sometimes not. But it didn't matter. We were happy and living a wonderful life.

And then we graduated. Carol got married senior year, Barb after graduation and LeAnne not long after that. We moved to different cities (Well, they did. I stayed put.) We had families and lives and careers. Some kept in closer touch than I did. We were living our lives and paths didn't cross so easily for most of us, despite promises that we would "get together."

So, old friends
Fill me in slow, old friends
Start from hello, old friends
I want the when, where and how

Forty years later, we did. LeAnne organized a weekend at her home in Grand Rapids. She had been in touch with Barb and Carol. I hadn't seen them in years. At least thirty and for Carol, the full forty, I think -- or close to it. Would we all still "fit" together? Would we like each other now? Would we look different? Be different?

Where do you start? For us, I think the first reaction was close to awe. We are finally together. After all these years. I just kept looking at them. They were the same. Sure, we're all a little older (OK, a lot older.) And we all love our hairdressers.

We brought photos of families and kids and shared stories about them and about our lives. Things changed for us. Carol had divorced the guy she married senior year and sometime after found the love of her life, remarrying about 30 years ago. Her son is grown and incredibly handsome. LeAnne was widowed several years ago and is finding her way back into the world with new interests, her sons having moved to the West Coast. Barb is married to the guy she married years ago, her kids scattered. She's fully retired, Carol and I are retired but working and LeAnne is trying to make that decision. In other words, we are all experiencing some of the same things but coming at them from the different perspectives that our own life circumstances have brought to the table.

"Our gang" was joined by Buzz (in front) and Pam at right for a game of Pit.

Then it was time to look at the College Days photos I brought. I am in precious few -- I was the only one with a camera. (Some things start at an early age!) We laughed until tears were streaming down our faces, remembering all the details, the minutiae of college life.

We were young and naive then and the world was a very different place. Within a few years, attending a Big 10 university would be an entirely different experience socially. And now, I sometimes barely recognize it. But back then we were on the threshold of a new social order. Vietnam would change how we looked at war, Watergate would influence politics and media coverage, women's liberation would affect us all.

But we still danced to Broadway musicals in our apartment, went to football games on crispy autumn afternoons, studied in the midst of the living room while chaos was going on about us, listened to Carole King and Cher and Richard Harris records, drank cheap wine that would disgust us now, went to the campus movies and played cards. They came to my plays and during a pivotal moment in "Wait Until Dark" screamed to "Close the refrigerator!" We were kids living with people not our families for the first time in our lives. And we were very happy.

And we still are.

 Old friends do
Tend to become old habit
Never knew
How much I missed you till now

We took a break to go see a production of "South Pacific" and returned home, talking till the wee hours, revisiting photos, recalling weddings and those moments that will never occur again because we were young and it all was new. We reluctantly went to bed and resumed the conversation at breakfast and after.

One by one, we headed back home until it was just me and LeAnne. At a visit to the Grand Rapids market, she shared the journey of being a widow and starting over. It's something we've all done in a way -- whether as a career, new relationship, new ways of looking at the world. But no way, I think, could be more poignant nor more challenging. It was the kind of talk  you want to hold close to your heart, to remember and to honor the courage that goes with loving, losing and beginning once more.

We left with the promise we would do this again in the summer when our junior year roommate, Terry, could join us. We left with memories revived, big smiles, and Barb's raspberry jam. And mostly, we left with the thought that this time lapse should never happen again.

Or, to paraphrase that "South Pacific" refrain we heard the night before, "Once you have found them, never let them go."