Reunion

I hate living with regrets and I have a very small regret regarding yesterday, we didn't take pictures. We didn't think about it until Carol was having us wash all our makeup off, after Valerie was gone, for our spa treatments and then of course, it was out of the question to even get the three of us still there. The rest of the day was perfect though.
I have to admit I was a bit apprehensive about our reunion, 3 out of 4 of my best friends from high school, in one room after 22 years. After 22 years of being in separate places, with separate lives, homes, experiences....22 years. I had seen all of them over the years at different times, and some of them had seen each other as well but to have us all in one place. Would we find stuff to talk about? Would we feel awkward? Had our lives grown so different that we wouldn't know what to say to the other? The answer was no, in a big way.
It seemed like immediately we feel into an easy, been around forever atmosphere and the topic of the day seemed to be our kids with a little of our parents mixed in for good measure. I was the last to get married and the first to have a kid, the three of them followed very shortly after with Tammy's daughter graduating this past May and Dani's and Valerie's being seniors this coming year so of course our topics was our teenagers and how we love them to death and how we have managed to keep them from being the death of us. There is just something so familiar and trusting and true about these girls. They knew me when....I knew them when......every blank possible can be filled in there. I have friends now that I cherish but there is just so much of my history that they weren't a part of that it just isn't the same. That feeling, that truly deep feeling of love and understanding is something I never realized I lost as we started families and started living our lives. We were standing in the bathroom taking off the makeup when Dani said basically the same thing, we all have friends, but not friends like this. I made the statement I wanted us to get back to this point before something happened that we "needed" to get back to this point. Several years ago, there was a movie about these women, there for each other through thick and thin, after that movie I started trying to figure out just who my Ya=Ya's would be. As I said earlier, we all have good friends now, friends we see every day and friends we know we would be there for them and they for us but I realized yesterday that these people, the ones that have "seen it all" so to speak are the ones who complete that circle for me. As we left yesterday, we vowed to do this again, soon. Part of me so wanted to hang on to it, to that feeling of completeness that was with me yesterday and part of me knows I will this time. I think they all feel the same way. So, we are ready to plan our next outing and make this a rest of our lives regular thing, even though we are scattered all over the state. Funny, I was the one who ran the farthest when we were young, and I am the one who is sitting within a mile of where we all came together. As Dani walked out of her parent's house yesterday, she yelled to her dad, "I'm going to Mindy's" as she said she had done a thousand times before. I'm hoping for many, many more of those times to come and Thank God he let us all be together yesterday. We were missing Tina yesterday but are hoping she can be there for our next get together, because I know two things, there will definitely be a next and it will definitely be soon. I can't help but hear the final words from the movie Stand By Me: I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve; does anyone?