Union, Reunion

Wabbit season! Duck season! Nope: mawwiage season!

Summer is of course the time most couples tend to get married, and I've just returned from a weekend in Mobile, at the wedding of two dear alum friends from Bluebell, classes of 2006 and 2009. It's also the only time in my life so far, and perhaps to come, when I have any reason to go to Alabama. I learned several things while there. For example, they really do have license plates which say "Sweet Home" across the top with "Alabama" along the bottom. Mobile is far more green and wooded and much less swampy than I had expected, though another of the guests remarked that, being on the bay and opening out to the Gulf, most any green thing grows and grows tall with that kind of humidity. And what humidity! The consistency of the air was more swampy than the ground. And of course there's air conditioning in every building imaginable, but that made me also realize: I wouldn't be able to live long in a place where you can't open your windows in homes, cars, offices and breathe in deep. Thankful as I was for the a/c, there's something soulless about living in nothing but mechanically moderated environments. I'm sure winter is better for breathing the air in Mobile - and certainly, we in New England don't tend to open our windows in the extreme cold... though, honestly, I do, and many others I know do as well. Not all the time in December-March, but every so often, just to bring in fresh air, and because the cold is bracing, gets the blood flowing. Ah well, different places feel right to different people. I was chatting with one of the bridesmaids, who grew up in Mobile, had gone to the Carolinas for school, and had now moved back to Mobile because she loved the heat and it was part of "home" for her.

Of course, as much as one attends any wedding for the bride and groom, it's also to see the other guests, with whom you spend most of your time anyways. A fair few Bluebell alums made the trip, and it was great to see them and hang around and talk, however briefly, between flying in on Friday and out on Sunday. We remarked how it seems after college, especially when people came to that college from all over the country and globe, how far flung we become once again after graduating. More than once it was said that now we'll see each other at weddings and funerals, hopefully more of the former. This is adulthood, it seems: unless we only make friends in our hometown, and stay there, and they do too, we are by default living far away from those closest to us. Someone I once dated said that those she held dearest were usually the friends she hadn't seen for the longest time, because distance smoothed out rough edges and it was easier to remember the good times, the good things in their personalities and characteristics. But that seems to me, while holding a grain of truth, an unecessarily cynical view. Surely we all have those moments, where we meet again with old friends and have nothing to say anymore, but I've found those moments to be rare. It seems to me that those who've shared a depth of friendship can access it across a span of years, geography, and most of life's experiences, assuming of course they're interested in "picking up where we left off," which is a personal choice one can do nothing but respect when the other person isn't interested.

The wedding wasn't the only event this month that gave me pause to think about the nature of friendship generally and my own friendships in particular: each June has Bluebell's Reunion Weekend, something most colleges have soon after the school year ends. I spent the entire Saturday of that weekend bouncing back and forth between friends in the classes of 2001 (juniors my senior year of college) and 2006 (sophomores the year I returned to Bluebell after grad school). Two were houseguests and dear friends from my World of Warcraft guild, another couple one of my closest friends in college and her husband, with the exciting news that they're pregnant with their first child. And more friends, from both classes, I hadn't kept in touch with but it was easy to see and talk with again, and catch up on our lives.

As usual during Reunion, there was both attendance at some of the college-sponsored events, and some ditching of them to spend time in local restaurants, a nearby lake, and just sitting and talking in dorms or out on the grass. At one point mid-afternoon when I was with the 2001s, there were eight of us crammed into a freshman dorm room - the alums 10 years out get the smallest of the 3 freshman dorms - and we couldn't stop laughing about how, once upon a time, we thought this was amazing housing for two people, in those wide-eyed first months of college. Much later that night, in a different dorm room (only slightly larger) with ten of the '06 crowd, we scooched up beside each other to fit in, on the bed and chairs and floor, and passed around some Jameson's and chocolate-covered almonds. Hey, it was what we had at the time. It was amusing to note how some of the conversations were similar between the two groups and some were different. All Bluebell kids, the groups just shy of having the opportunity to know each other, and arguably on the cusp of opposite sides of the Generation X/Millennials divide. It was satisfying to me to be sitting there, comfortable in both groups, and to reflect on that.

We all have things we take pride in, and sometimes too much, but what we esteem about ourselves says things, for good and for ill. I don't know that I could have owned this a few years ago, but looking over the past month I find it's true: I take pride in having friendships - some of them deep friendships - with people of widely different ages from myself, and especially from the past 17 years of Bluebell students, from the 1997s who were seniors my freshman year, all the way through this recent year's freshmen, the 2014s. It feels strange to say that, partly because it doesn't feel like I've spent that much of my life associated with Bluebell, though I have. Part of it is also because it feels odd for me, as an introvert, to not only have friends across that wide of a spectrum, but also to have pride in it. But it does mean a lot to me that I continue to develop friendships with people of different generations, different dispositions, with different interests and passions as the years pass. I know people who can't do this, and others who want to but don't seem to know how. I'm not sure I know how either, other than by having a good sense of who you are personally, and being a good listener to others. And you'd have to be actually interested in other people, which I see less of in the world at large than I would have guessed. Not that I'm interested in most or even many people, but some people are interesting, and worth pursuing.

I've been told that my attitude may change if I get married, and that's fair: it might. When I've been in relationships my interest in outside friendships hasn't overly changed, but there's been a subtle shift away from forming new ones sometimes. And I can see marriage pushing that shift even more, in both emotional and very practical ways. When you have to consider the friendship habits and energy levels of your partner, attentiveness to what you find interesting in other people decreases. And then of course there's the dilemma of finding friends you both like. So I'm willing to give some creedence to the thought that it's partly because I'm unmarried that I tend to just pursue friendships I'm interested in without much hesitation. Still, I can't agree with that being the only, or primary reason. Which brings my thoughts full circle to the wedding in Mobile: two people I knew as my friends separately and then together, the feeling of honor to be asked to celebrate their union with them, and for being able to renew friendships among those they also invited. I wish them the best of this world: health, happiness, a long life together, creativity (pro- or otherwise), and good friends. Friends to share weddings and funerals, those big events of life. And reunions, the times to remember and cherish what came before.