Box Of Rain

This past weekend I had the pleasure of escaping to Cincinnati and reuniting with some of my sorority sisters from college. We try to do this off and on and the time that I spend with them is so special to me.

In my ever changing moods, I think some of the strongest bonds of friendship are made in college. Someone, last week, asked me why these girls are any different from any of my other friends. I really thought about that and then it hit me. These were the friends that I met along the way of paving my first paths of independence. Our times spent in those 4+ years were some of the best memories that I carry in my heart. For me, college was all about the experiences, the learning, the failures, the excitement of living on your own, the bonds that brought us together, in our sorority.

After college, our paths all took us in different directions and we went years without any contact. There were weddings, in the beginning, and we were bridesmaids and then brides and then life took all of us on our next journey, after college.

The past few years have reunited me with some of my closest pals and when we get together, we laugh, we yell, we consume cocktails, we try to retrace different stories from college. We talk about our old crushes, our old humiliations, our sisterhood and our lives, now. Most of us have kids already in college or kids approaching college. We talk about our hopes for them to have the same experience that we had.

Time has been good to all of us and as we sat around the table at the restuarant, enjoying fine wine, instead of our old Dime Draft standbys or our Tequila Sunrises, I loved looking around, in the candlelight, at the beautiful faces that were some of my first female influences that helped to shape me. Thank you, girls, for a lovely time.

College...to me, is like this song says...Such a long, long time to be gone and a short time to be there. And, I was so happy that I was there, on campus, in the early to mid 80s, forming friendships with girls over sorority songs, candlelight ceremonies, rush madness, broken hearts, crushes, classes, all night study sessions and downtown bar trolling...It was a time that could never be duplicated and lives on in my heart.