The Burrow

I have a 7:30am flight today. Tucson to Houston to Charlotte and MTF .   My visit to My True Friend has morphed into a mini- reunion of the Class of 1969.  The girls who were sweet in high school are still sweet as adults, and two of them are joining us for a visit to the Carolinas.  I've packed for 6 days in the Little Cuter's soccer bag; sundresses roll up into teeny tiny little balls and flip flops aren't much bigger.  Traveling light, that's me.  I can't promise to have time to write every afternoon, so I'm scheduling some things I've found in the ether.  MTF is a doer and I fear my time to reflect and report will be constrained by the walking and talking and seeing and shopping and viewing and being.  Enjoy the holiday weekend. I know I will.  ***** I'm pretty sure I won't see anything this cool today.  The music is pretty nice, too.   

Chapter 5 - Well, Not Really Reunion Related I'm still feeling the glow, but it's fading from the front of my brain to a spot someplace on the 3rd or 4th step. There..... but not setting my mood each morning. What I'm thinking about now is the wonderfulness that was The City. Yes, THE CITY. People in Marin or on the North Shore or The Main Line might talk about going into The City, but I'm sorry...... neither San Francisco nor Chicago nor Philly hold a candle to the Big Apple. Don't get me wrong - I think Chicago is the best city in America today. For livability, culture, outdoor recreation, free events, civic pride..... it's hard to argue the point. San Francisco has a vibe unlike anyplace else and its residents love it and cannot imagine living elsewhere (as the Big Cuter says, "It's insane.... but it's mine") But they're still not New York. No place but Manhattan has that melting pot vibrancy, that bond forged by the shared adversity o...

Chapter 3 - The Main Event We weren't due there til 1pm. It was drizzling on and off all morning, so our semi-formed plan to stroll the streets was put on hold. That was fine; I was still sleeping off jet-lag and the conversation at breakfast was keeping me interested. I hadn't been after-school-socializing-friends with the other early morning eaters at The Park South, but it didn't seem to matter. Career paths, marital woes, demented parents - there was sharing and supporting and commiserating and resource swapping and lots of rueful laughter. Offspring and spouses were mentioned only in passing - this was our reunion, not theirs, after all. Some had gone out to Long Island the day before, and there were on-the-scene reports of the condition of their old houses and the high school and the now-defunct Rainbow Diner. The Rainbow Diner - scene of every Friday and Saturday night late night it's almost but not quite time to go home gathering from 9th grade through college....

Hi there Burrow faithful, Victoria here. I would like to extend an apology for the delay in Ashleigh's post today. It would appear that Ashleigh's impending high school reunion has rendered her without the ability to tell time, and thus she scheduled today's Thursdays in the Garden to run at 6 PM instead of 6 AM. Regularly scheduled posting will resume tomorrow (trust me- I double checked!).

Who knew? Apparently, everyone but Amster and I did. But now we are initiated, and I wonder if we will ever go back. Here's how it started: 18 months ago, TBG was recruited to be on a mock jury for one of Amster's trials. He spent a marvelous full day listening to arguments and then participating in deliberations with a real cross-section of Tucson's population. At the end, he was rewarded with many thanks and a crisp, new $50 bill. He came home to my Harriet Housewife incarnation : chairs were on tables, rugs were rolled up, ottomans were resting on couches as the floor was being mopped to within an inch of its life. The kitchen counters were sparkling, the stainless steel appliances had nary a hand print nor a streak, the fallen french fries had been removed from the oven's floor, the bed linens were fresh and the bathrooms were gleaming. I had been busy, and I looked it. Bedraggled and sweaty, my manicure destroyed, I leaned on the mop handle and said "Hi"...

How dressed up are you getting for the reunion itself? I bet you went to a lot of other places in your mind before you got to clothes for the party , didn't you? Well, I didn't. In fact, I'm just back from checking to see whether my Yearbook will fit into the purse I've tentatively decided upon. It does. What with President Obama being awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace when Arizona State University didn't think he deserved an honorary degree last spring, I wonder that anything could surprise you. So I hope that you won't think me trivial when I say that this is, in fact, an important question. It is also a question that everyone is reluctant to ask. I, however, have no boundaries between my brain and my mouth, so I've been asking everyone. " How dressed up are you getting?" is how I phrase it, and the responses have been uniform - everyone laughs. Giggles on the phone and LOL on Facebook messages and behind every smile I am also detecting (project...

From a Facebook Message Thread: So, why do you think that those I considered my closest friends in high school do not wish to renew our friendships? Either I made bad choices in friends OR I made good choices in walking away from those friends, right? ***** Oh, pal of mine, who's hurting you????? Are they not friending you? Ignoring your emails? Blocking your calls? I know you didn't get a reply to a letter ... even after you'd taken the time to track down a land address and written lovely thoughts on pretty stationary. Slighting someone who sends snail mail... now that's low. You are not alone, though. I've been shunned, too ..... and she was as close to a best friend as I had back then. At least it always seemed that she thought so. We spoke once on the phone when I was in California, and then nothing. I felt strangely bereft when my emails went unanswered. We'd been so much a part of each other's lives and now.... nothing. I wondered about it, too. Does ...

You just never know. In high school he was smart and funny and kind but never really stood out in a crowd. Now, you'd instantly recognize his name. Our parents were better friends than we were; he didn't sign my yearbook. He played basketball and he was good and tall (my favorite basketball coach's quote: "You can't teach height." ) and recruited to play D-I ball, but, after all, it was Marin basketball we'd seen him play. Not exactly The Bronx. Now he's playing right field in the Majors. She was literary editor of the yearbook, and as she inscribed in mine, .." there's always a certain person who we like to talk about." Now she's married to that certain person and her books are in Barnes and Noble next to Tolstoy and Twain. Some I expected to do well - the valedictorian who went on to be an editor of the Harvard Law Review, the hotel magnate's sons who run companies and produce movies. There's comfort in the knowledge that ...

40th high school reunion is coming up - do I type My or Our or My class's ? They are 3 very different things, and it is all very confusing. I'm going to skip over the whole "where did the time go?" and "how did I/we get so old?" stuff and get right to the nitty gritty - what will I wear? Actually, that's the easy part of the whole thing. It's the people part that's weirding me out. TBG is sending me off to The Big Apple alone, and I'm just as glad. We met years after high school was over ( so over ) and he's not a piece of that action. My date is My True Friend (MTF) and we've run out of ways to say that we can hardly wait. Her aunt's apartment or the hotel I found - it doesn't matter. Staying 3 days or 4 days or maybe even 5 is sounding better and better as the date draws nigh. Ours was an accomplished class (... and all the children are above average ..... ) and there are one or two really famous people who'll be a...