Reunions

This seems to be the season for them.

This past weekend, I was in Erie, reconnecting with people from what feels like another lifetime. This coming weekend, I'll drive south, to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, to spend a week at the beach with my dad, my brother, my niece, and uncles, aunts and cousins I've known all my life — but hardly know at all in some ways.

I'll save the Nag's Head reflections for later — after I've been back at the vacation spot of my childhood and teen years and taken inventory of how it and I have changed over the past (gulp) 30 years or so.

For now, let's return to Erie.

On Sunday morning, I drove north from Pittsburgh on I-79, not stopping until after the highway did. I arrived at Gannon's Chapel at the corner of Peach and 5th just before mass started at noon, and when I walked inside, I was greeted by former colleagues, long-ago graduated students who were involved in campus ministry back in the day, and even a former boyfriend and his wife and three beautiful children.

"Back in the day" would be circa 1989-93, which were my years as the Protestant Campus Minister at this Roman Catholic diocesan university along the shores of Lake Erie.

I lived in Erie for four years, and they were years of profound self-discovery, growth and humility for me. I was a year out of college when I moved into the Kirk House to do campus ministry at Gannon University. When I moved to Pittsburgh in 1993, I was as a changed person as when I'd graduated from college five years earlier, but the changes were more challenging in many ways the ones I'd undergone as a student. It was a good experience for me to be at Gannon. I was a minority there. I had to figure out how to work as an employee of an evangelical college ministry para-church organization in cooperation with a mainline Presbyterian church, with students and staff at a Roman Catholic institution.

There's too much to write about all of that— far more than I have time or space to articulate at the moment. Suffice to say, I don't like change as a rule, but I recognize it as necessary, and even desirable — especially when it's over and done and I can look back fondly and forget the pain that came in the midst of the process.

Back to reunions.

I got to watch the giggly freshmen and sophomores I knew all those years ago shepherd their children between the picnic tables, bathhouse and beach (that is, Beach 11 at Presque Isle State Park). As I commented to Katie, the mommies they've become are so intricately connected to the essence of their college student personas. There was a comforting continuity and recognition in seeing their humor and care expressed to their offspring, much as it was to each other when they were just figuring out who they are. And these children are delightful, and blessed to have such loving, caring, faith-filled parents.

Sheryl and TG have both reflected on the day's events beautifully on their own blogs. (TG — you certainly DO rock the orange flip-flops!) It was a gift to see students who have become friends, but who live too far away to make regular contact probable. Some of them, I've seen as recently as two weeks or six years ago. Others, not since they graduated 15 years ago. Most drove in from such far-flung locations as Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Buffalo — the Erie Triangle. Sheryl trekked all the way north from Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

As always after a reunion like this, I am grateful for the gift of time and space to reconnect with people who were once-upon-a-time so integral to my daily life, and who have, whether they know it or not, contributed to making me the person I am today. I'm already looking forward to next year's reunion, and to reconnecting with those who weren't able to make it this year.

Reunion Season continues...