Time and tide

If you are fifty, then thirty-five is about seventy percent of your life. So, reconnecting with someone you haven't seen that long is in itself a gratifying experience. But when that period of no contact is filled with pretty much all of life's significant events, that reconnection becomes all the more memorable. After all, when you meet people whom you last saw when all of you were in school uniforms and slogging away at chemistry and physics and math while hitting puberty and all the attendant issues, you really, really have a lot to catch up on. 

We were really barely sprouting wings then, and then in the blink of an eye, seemingly, we are sprouting grey hairs and painful joints. 

We weren't exactly best friends in school or anything, but our orbits intersected sometimes.  It was probably taking the same bus to school, or a shared love of basketball,  or common friends from back in school. But the moment the idea germinated, it was taken up by all of us and there we were, the day after Christmas, sitting at an Indian restaurant, drinking tea and rose milk and soda and munching on idli and dosas. That in itself I think, makes one feel the emotions of childhood rushing back into one's bloodstream. After all what can be more thrilling than feeling fifteen again, munching what was everyday food for us back then?

We all started filling in the gaps very tentatively, and managed to catch up on most of what had gone on in our lives. We were loud and raucous and jumping between English and Tamil. But it struck me later- our children and their goings on filled most of our conversation. We had extremely professional women in high positions at the table, but the talk was about the kids and their shenanigans. Husbands  were casually mentioned in the conversation, but we kept swiveling back to the kids. Their schooling, jobs, talents, love life. 

And then there was the common bane of almost all  women hitting the half century - perimenopause and its horrors. Hot flushes were discussed in great detail, followed by falling hair and flooding periods and birth control and endometrial ablation and hysterectomy ..the list goes on.  Using hair dyes was a side discussion!

Travel seems to be another hot topic. All of us seemed to like it and there was talk of past trips and future plans.

In the blink of an eye, time was up and since we all had things lined up to be done that day, we had to break up the reunion and get back to being 50 year olds again.

But the feeling I walked away with was contentment, a sense of joy that after thirty five years and innumerable milestones that each of us had individually and collectively hit  we could always be those eager, enthusiastic, wide eyed kids with the world before us, discussing our greatest achievements- our kids.

Lovely reunion! Here's to many more years of reunions, however fleeting!