Category Archives: Uncategorized

12.23.13
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The Fellowship of the Cookie

Among the things I miss most about my former work life are a few really good friends.  After working closely with some of them for over 25 years, I find myself yearning for that day to day contact, sharing the up’s and down’s of each other’s lives, and working on projects together.   When I retired, I had no doubt that I would stay in touch with my closest friends; however, I underestimated the loss of that daily contact.  It takes effort to set up lunch dates and even phone calls when no longer coworkers.  In my ideal fantasy world, I would have my own office where I would see my pals at the beginning of each day over coffee and at the end of the day to share our stories.   Sometimes we’d also have lunch.  (The time in between I don’t really want to do any work; hence, this is my fantasy world.)

Which is why last Sunday I was in heaven.   I decided to invite my former work group to my house for a holiday multi-tasking party.  I reckoned since I’m not working, I’d decorate my house early and we could bake, wrap and address cards together.   I remember being under such stress this time of year, with much to do, and my idea was to provide a festive environment where we could complete tasks together.   As it happened, because it is such a busy season, only my good friend John could join me.

The backlog of cookies that formed with just one oven!

The backlog of cookies that formed with just one oven!

But, oh, did we have fun!  John and I baked cookies together.  For SIX hours.  We planned our recipes during the course of the week and coordinated our ingredients.  On Sunday morning, we plotted our cookie strategy and then made adjustments to our project plan (oops, we forgot to take the 14 sticks of butter out of the fridge to soften) and more adjustments (oops, we hadn’t read the part about chilling the dough for several hours).  We helped each other by holding bowls and spatulas and measuring ingredients.   And we made SIX recipes together.  We talked and we laughed and we invented inside jokes about our baking adventure (“those damn pecan balls!”).   During the course of the following week, we texted gags to each other about our cookies.   Very little of our conversation was about work.

After six hours of baking, displaying the fruits of our Cookie-Palooza

After six hours of baking, displaying the fruits of our Cookie-Palooza

In some ways it was just like the old days working together on a joint project.  But in other ways, it is a delightful new relationship that transcends our work history.  By carving out a block of time for our friendship (my husband watched football in the other room while we worked and John’s partner was visiting his mother) we underscored its importance in our changed circumstances.  We did more than bake cookies together.  We created new memories and a new tradition for our friendship.

12.13.13
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Christmas Memories

When I was a girl, the Christmas season elicited in me a pure unadulterated joy.   I could think of no good reason why anyone would feel anything but.  As I’ve grown older, though, a melancholy has crept into the Christmas season, with remembrances of loved ones that I’ve lost and seasons that are past.

This past Tuesday, I had the house to myself and I spent the morning decorating our tree.  I was thankful that I was home and not working.  I was grateful that I’ve had the extra time this year to savor the holiday preparations.  I was joyfully anticipating our son’s homecoming next week.

I put on Christmas music and opened a box of decorations brought in from the garage.   The first song that played was Nat King Cole’s “Christmas Song” – one of my mother’s favorites.   A flood of memories struck me. Being the only daughter, it was mom and I that worked on Christmas preparations together and it was a cherished tradition for us both.  Even when I was away at college, she would wait until I got home to do the baking and decorating.  I lost my mom five years ago, right before Christmas.   I miss her.

Made with foil and cardboard, our most cherished and beautiful tree topper

Made with foil and cardboard, our most cherished and beautiful tree topper.

Then I began unpacking the ornaments.   We have a collection that were purchased at places we’ve visited (lovingly labeled with the date and place), or received from friends and family, or handmade by our son.  The first ornament that I placed on the tree was the topper.    This is a cardboard and foil star (held together with wire and scotch tape) that I made with my stepson the first Christmas I spent with my husband (then boyfriend).   My husband had been a single dad for a few years and for various reasons the two of them had never bought a tree.   I talked them into getting one, and then had to improvise since there weren’t any ornaments around. We quite cleverly punched a hole in the star to insert a tree light. Twenty-seven years later, I still think this is the most beautiful tree topper. Twelve years ago, we lost my stepson in an accident.   I miss him.

After I married, my parents spent almost every Christmas with us.  My mother loved coming to our house since she didn’t have to do any of the work.  My father absolutely relished his grandson excitedly jumping on their bed early Christmas morning and then frolicking around the house like a kid with him and his toys.  One Christmas my son played a duet at a Christmas piano recital with one of his little buddies, and the two got into an on-stage argument over timing.   That episode quickly assumed a prominent place in comic family lore and my dad always delighted in having my son and I play piano duets at Christmas time.  I pulled my parents’ Christmas stockings out of the box and hung them over the fireplace.  Seven years ago I lost my dad, not long before Christmas.  I miss him, too.

The Little Mitten ornament I embroidered while pregnant. This was a season of anticipations

The Little Mitten ornament I embroidered while pregnant. This was made during a season of joyful anticipation

I unwrapped a few more ornaments from the box.  One of my favorites is a little mitten that I embroidered while pregnant with my son.   I didn’t know if I was having a girl or boy, and I waited until after he was born to embroider his name on the mitten.  I then sifted through countless ornaments my son made while in pre-school, school and Sunday School.  I loved every minute of those years with my young son and Christmas was hands down his favorite day of the year.  He has since grown into an incredible young man whom I love with all my heart, but I miss my little boy.   I miss that season of my life.

I am thankful for all the blessings that God has bestowed on me, past and present. Christmas is indeed a time for great joy.   But I am also grateful for my melancholy Tuesday morning, alone with the tree and decorations.  It proved to be an unexpected and profound time of spiritual reflection, remembrance and grief for those people and seasons that I loved.

12.04.13
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Thanksgiving with the Melnicks

Last year we spent Thanksgiving at the home of complete strangers.  We had so much fun we went back this year.

After coming home his first Thanksgiving while away at college, our son decided last year he didn’t want to make the long journey homeward. My older brother invited us to his home in Pennsylvania, and to Thanksgiving at the Melnicks’ (names changed to protect the wonderful in this post).  My brother and Mike Melnick have been friends for over 30 years – they were co-workers and poker buddies for ages.   My brother and his family have been celebrating Thanksgiving at the Melnicks’ for over 20 years.  I, however, had never met them.

A big draw for our son was that one Melnick nephew is an Annapolis grad and a Navy helicopter pilot.  So, we accepted the offer, flew to the east coast, picked up our son and drove to Pennsylvania.

The dining tables. The Smart Table is in the corner.

The dining tables. The Smart Table is in the corner.

When we arrived at the Melnicks’ modest 3-story suburban house last Thanksgiving Day, Mike and Madge Melnick greeted each of us by name with bear hugs and a warm welcome.  There was an enormous table in the dining room for the food.  Tables and chairs were set up throughout every other room on the first floor for over 40 dinner guests.  Each of the portable dining tables was beautifully and lovingly decorated with fall color linens, pumpkins, flowers and greens.  There were handwritten place cards attached to little straw turkeys at each place setting.  I was at first alarmed that my husband, son and I were placed at different tables (as were my brother, sister-in-law and nephew).  I was anxious when I was jokingly told I was at the “Smart Table”.  I headed for the wine bar (I’m always smarter after a glass of wine.)  I was fearful this was going to be one of those social functions where I really had to be on my game.

The lovely table decorations

The lovely table decorations

While driving to the festivities, my sister-in-law gave me the Melnick Who’s-Who briefing.   As I began mingling at the house, my head was whirling trying to match and organize names and faces and relationships.  Somewhat related to my lifelong People Magazine obsession, when I step into a room of strangers, I find it oddly fascinating to decipher connections and back-stories.  (In fact, this year after I left the Melnick gathering I charted all the relationships just for fun to test my knowledge — but more about that later.)

By the time I took my place at the Smart Table for dinner, I was ready for the challenge.  I decided to use my PSE training, a sales technique I learned on the job that works brilliantly in most social situations.  Basically, you just continue to ask question after question, the goal being to elicit as much information as possible while keeping the other person(s) talking.  I have found that the more the other person is engaged in talking, the more I learn and the cleverer he or she thinks I am.  Generally, most “smart” people love to talk about themselves.

The living room filled with dinner guests

The living room filled with dinner guests

But a funny thing happened at the Smart Table–on the way to my “sale”.  It started with the blessing and toast that Mike Melnick gave before dinner.  He wiped away tears as he spoke of friends and family.  He specifically welcomed my husband, son, and me, by name, to his home in his toast. My tablemates chuckled as they described how his toasts get longer and more emotional every year.  The people at the Smart Table were indeed brainy and accomplished and, also, really, really KIND. There were a married couple of scientists.  There was an urban planner and an architect. Somewhere around my twentieth follow-up question, I forgot about composing my next one.  I was relaxed and simply enjoying the conversation.  We talked about family and farming and books and food and history. I genuinely yearned to know more about them, and they were interested in learning more about me.  One of my tablemates was the twin brother of Madge Melnick.  He described how they and their 6 siblings grew up on a farm in Minnesota.  He explained how their older sister Betty travels every year from Texas to the Melnicks’ house to direct this Thanksgiving extravaganza.  The two sisters spend all week cooking, cleaning, decorating and laughing.  And they love it. By the end of our 2-½ hour dinner together, I was the best of friends with my Smart Table-mates.

A few times during dinner, I looked around to see how my son and husband were faring.  My husband was apparently seated at the “Sports Table”.  He sat with a bunch of other guys, an enormous plate of food before him, near a big-screen TV tuned to one of the football games.  A look of utter contentment on his face – like the cat that just ate the canary.

The first time I looked for my son, I observed he was seated next to the Navy helicopter pilot and there was a clear case of male bonding happening.  He sat in rapt attention as the pilot talked about his experiences at the Academy, post-Academy, at flight training and in his career.  Later in the evening, I noticed my son had moved.  I looked out the window and saw him run by, followed by a younger cousin, and a line of younger Melnick relatives and friends, like the Pied Piper.  It was a massive game of hide and seek.  It made me happy that my only child son was able to have some carefree family playtime.

What we experienced at the Melnicks was pure and genuine hospitality.  At the core is a large close-knit family who love being together and who delight in sharing that kinship with a growing circle of family and friends.  They went to great lengths to make us feel welcome – they even thought in advance what and who each of us would enjoy and tried to surround us with what would make us comfortable.

When Thanksgiving rolled around this year, we were invited and decided to return to the Melnicks.  We pulled up to the house and it was like a family reunion.  We got our bear hugs from Mike and Madge. Little Ella, who was a newborn last year, just celebrated her first birthday and was almost walking. The Navy pilot excitedly told us about his orders to a new duty station.  The tables were all decorated again, this time with little straw pumpkins for place cards. I was delighted to return to the Smart Table.   My husband was at the Sports Table with his old friends near the big-screen. Mike gave his toast and choked up.  It took me a little while to get all the names and relationships refreshed in my brain (revising my mental data banks for any updates) and I expanded my inquiries to unearth new levels of detail about the attendees.

That night, after we returned from Thanksgiving at the Melnicks’, and while it was still fresh in my head, I decided to jot a chart with the names and relationships of the people who were at the gathering.   Partly to save me some time next year, partly just for fun, partly to impress my husband and brother with my savant talent.  But in looking at it, I was struck that this was a family tree with a strong trunk of family relationships, but with significant and sturdy branches of non-blood, long-standing relationships (like my brother) that have become permanent parts of the tree.

I am forever thankful for the Melnicks.  During our son’s time at the Academy, it has been difficult for us to be together at home for Thanksgiving.   We considered either being separated for the holiday or eating Thanksgiving dinner at a restaurant near Annapolis.  Instead, we were deeply blessed by the Melnicks with two warm and cozy family Thanksgivings that we will always treasure.  And to me, Thanksgiving at the Melnicks was a lesson in the true meaning and expression of hospitality, family and compassion that I will never forget.

11.27.13
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My First Post-Retirement Performance Review

Unbelievably, I’ve been retired for an entire quarter already.  Since I’ve positioned Year One of retirement as scientific experimentation (which warrants some level of rigor) AND old corporate habits die hard, I feel compelled to give myself a post-retirement quarterly review.  Dusting off the old performance review templates from memory banks (and causing myself stress just thinking about it) here goes:

On a scale of 1 to 5 (1 = bad/you suck, 5 = excellent/good job):

(1) Progress toward stated Year One goals:

Paris trip – 5

Rest/recuperation – 4 (points off for jet lag)

Have fun – 5

Clean-up projects around the house – 2

Clean-up projects in garage – Q2 – AFTER HOUSE

Route 66 driving trip – Q3 – AFTER HOUSE AND GARAGE

Observations: Q1 was dominated by R&R, travel and fun. I was primarily a big goof-off, which fit my objectives perfectly.  After catching up on sleep the first two weeks, the majority of waking hours was spent planning and executing our fabulous Paris trip, two reunion weekends (my law school and my husband’s high school) and then three additional trips to Annapolis and one trip to San Jose for Navy football games.  We managed to attend all five Navy home games AND the Navy–SJSU game (resulting in all W’s which should bump me up to a 5+ rating on some scale).  Out of curiosity, I tallied days home v. days away and we were clearly away more than home, almost twice as much September through November. Which is a perfect excuse for why I didn’t get more done at home.

I did start working on home cleanup projects in between trips.  I managed to make my way through 2 ½ rooms (including closets), as part of Operation Purge, which entails sorting, tossing and trips to Goodwill.  After the holidays, our travel will slow down and Operation Purge will swing into high gear.

(2) Positives:

Flexibility – I’ve really enjoyed the flexibility.  It’s fun to do things spontaneously and go places, like restaurants or the mall or movies, during off-hours and avoid crowds.   When planning trips we can go an extra day or two or (what the heck!) week to take advantage of lower fares or less traffic.

Free time – my free time is now truly free.  In the past, I rarely had a vacation where there was no BlackBerry to check, no email to return, no conference call THAT I JUST HAD TO dial into.  I can really relax and be present and enjoy myself.  On several of our fall trips to Annapolis for football games, we booked extra days and explored the area – we visited small towns we’d never seen, museums we’d never discovered, scenic drives we’d never taken.  With free time, the world becomes an oyster!

Less stress – See two points above.  Friends have commented (with no prodding on my part) that I look physically younger, happier and more relaxed.  I sleep better and my energy level is higher. I didn’t realize how much stress I was under until I was away from the job for a while.

Time with hubby – I was worried (as was my husband!) that too much together time might lead to unpleasant consequences, such as one of us killing the other.  It has been an adjustment (mostly with our home routine that I have disrupted).  However, for the most part it has surprisingly been a non-issue.   In fact, we are really enjoying doing things together, especially the travel.   I am thankful my husband is an available partner in my retirement activities.  If he was still working, I don’t think it would be nearly as enjoyable.

Travel – something I loved about my job was the travel.  I relished staying in hotels, visiting new places and exploring cities.   However, I often didn’t have time to do much sightseeing when I was working.  Although I was perfectly happy traveling solo, expeditions with a partner are much more rewarding. Now, we can go to those bucket list places and do those bucket list things we’ve always talked about, and at our own pace.  I was gratified that our inaugural trip to Paris was a success and gave us the confidence and incentive to do more big trips.

(3) Challenges:

An office – it may sound silly, but I do miss having my own office.  When I was working, I shared our home office with my husband.  But there’s something important about having your own space.  Even in retirement, there are things to do – bills to be paid, appointments to be scheduled, events and travel to be planned, etc.  I am, for the time being, using my laptop and cellphone in our den as my office.    But I have no desk or desk chair or file cabinets (or IT department or administrative assistant or receptionist, but I need to get over that). For now it is working fine, but at some point I would like to set up my own home office space (maybe in my son’s room once he graduates college but don’t tell him yet).

Time management – after being constantly under the gun in the corporate world for the past 25 years, it’s difficult to approach a To Do list with anything other than a fanatic urge to finish as quickly as possible.   I find myself with that old familiar stress when I still have (horrors!) unchecked items on my list, even if they are things like “Look for Ribbon for the suitcases at Jo-Ann Fabrics” or “Sort Magazines on the Coffee Table.”  The other trap is that I am often unsure of what day of the week it is (forget ever knowing the date) and sometimes I have to think hard about what month it is.   Without the structure of work, it is easy to lose track of time. I know I have more time now, but the days seem to just fly by.  How did I ever have time for a job?

Lack of routine – since Q1 was all about travel, I haven’t really settled into a “normal” routine.  I still feel like I’m on an extended vacation.  In Q2, once our travel abates and I start working around the house, I would expect a more normal (or less abnormal?) daily rhythm to develop.

Post-retirement activities – somewhat related to the previous points, I have purposely not made any decisions about how I will spend my time after this first year and have in fact turned down several offers.  It has not yet become clear to me how I would like to spend the bulk of my future time in retirement.  I know that, in addition to our travel, I would like to get involved in ongoing “work,” whether that be volunteer, part-time or non-profit, that will be meaningful to me.    As much fun as I’m having with my life of merriment, I can already sense a need for some “greater good” purpose to be significantly reflected in my activities.  I also miss the camaraderie of co-workers and the sense of pride that comes with team/organizational accomplishments.  Once I have my major home projects under control, I will embark on a more focused search.

(4) 360 feedback:

For purposes of this review, I asked my sole “co-worker” (my husband) for feedback on how my retirement is going thus far.  His response was “You’re doing fine.”  Okay, then! Whether that answer stemmed from an understandable fear of the repercussions of saying anything negative or from extreme laziness in answering one stupid question, (hey I was in the same boat for 25 years, I know the game!) or was, in fact, an accurate assessment (albeit somewhat sparse), I can’t say for sure.  I will therefore interpret his response as akin to the proverbial “Pleasure to have in class” comment I always received from my teachers in grade school and leave it at that.

(5) Overall rating: 

5

That’s the other beauty of retirement.  I’m now the boss and I can rate myself whatever I want!

11.21.13
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Giverny: A Day With Monet

If you ever want to step back in time and into an impressionist painting, I know just the place for you.  Go to Giverny and visit Claude Monet’s home and gardens, where he lived from 1883 until his death in 1926.

We took the train from Paris to Vernon and rode bicycles the four miles to the village of Giverny.  Evidently, Claude Monet also first spotted Giverny while looking out of a train window. He chose to move there, leasing a house and the surrounding area. Eventually he bought the home and property and set out to create the magnificent gardens he wanted to paint. Many of his well-known paintings were of his grounds in Giverny, famous for its rectangular walled garden, with archways of climbing plants entwined around colored shrubs. Equally striking are the water garden with the Japanese bridge and the pond with the celebrated water lilies (the subject of the iconic paintings hanging at the Musee L’Orangerie in Paris).

When planning our Paris vacation, I plugged Giverny into our itinerary toward the end, but labeled it “optional” since I was skeptical we would still have the energy or will by that point. Plus, I was dubious that my husband would be super excited about florae. I was pleasantly surprised when he checked out Giverny on-line and enthusiastically declared it a Must Do.  He even researched and led us to a local SNCF office where we pre-purchased our train tickets.

With that, we arose at zero dark thirty the next day and, having now become experts on the metro AND train (due to our previous trip to Normandy), embarked without incident.  We located the bicycle rental shop across from the Vernon train station and rode a bike path along a train right-of-way through the quaint French countryside.  I felt as if I was riding a magical bike back in time.

Monet's Gardens - a veritable explosion of color!

Monet’s Gardens – a veritable explosion of color!

We arrived at Monet’s house and gardens not long after it opened and the crowds were surprisingly sparse.   We entered the gardens and it was a “Wizard of Oz” moment.   You know — where Dorothy steps out of the house into Oz and the movie changes from black and white to Technicolor.   It was a veritable explosion of color.  And I needn’t have worried about my husband as he was equally or more taken with the place than I.   My ex-military, sports-loving husband was besotted with flowers. We couldn’t walk more than five steps before he’d stop to take a picture.  “Look at that flower!”  “Oh, look at that tree!”  “Wow, look at this!”  By the time we left Giverny, he had taken over 500 pictures.    When I later tried to put together a slide show of Giverny, after coming home, I was hard pressed to leave any of the photos out…each one was spectacular, unique, colorful and unforgettable.

There is an unfortunate coda to the story, when I ate salmon in cream sauce for lunch at an historic hotel café in Giverny, got sick to my stomach and threw up in a baguette bag on the train to Paris.   (Based on the very French-like reaction, I got a definite sense it was a very un-French thing to do.)  But regardless of its less than classy ending, I’m so glad the Giverny agenda item was upgraded from optional to mandatory.  It was a lifetime memory and a beautifully joyful complement to our other day trip to Normandy D-Day beaches.

09.22.13
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Good Grief – Reflections on the Process of Leaving

I’m really glad I had a proper burial at work.  I say that because the whole process felt like a strange mix of birthday and funeral.   When I made the final decision to retire, I did a fair amount of thinking as to how much notice I should give.   Since my 55th birthday was in August 2013 (at which time I qualified for Early Retirement) my primary exit strategy was to wait until my 2012 bonus was safely in my bank account, wait a few more weeks for the optics, and then give notice.   There wasn’t a great deal of precedence for the proper protocols…. in recent years, not many people stuck around until retirement age.  Or if they did, we were increasingly receiving curt emails that read “We thank John Smith for his 30 years of service.  His last day is tomorrow and we wish him well.”

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A picture taken on one of my last workdays of me and my closest work colleagues by some artwork outside our office. In hindsight, it would have made a great photo for my workplace “Funeral” program – depicting my ascension into retirement!

So, I figured four months should be more than enough.  That way, the company would have some time to decide how to replace me, and I could offer to participate in the hiring or training process for my replacement.  When I first gave notice, I was pretty burned out and disillusioned and I wanted nothing more than to walk or run quickly from the building in the cover of night. What I didn’t foresee was what a fun chapter that last four months would prove to be.

Over the course of my last months, I sometimes wished I had given less notice. Some days just seemed to drag on, and nobody seemed to be in much hurry to make decisions about how to replace me.    I contended daily with the 5 stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, acceptance, depression and acceptance).   Not me, mind you –  I was alive and well and smiling ear to ear, and yet everyone around me was mourning my loss, and different people were in different stages on different days.  And then the politics and  jockeying for my leadership role began.  It was exhausting. And more than a little weird.

On the other hand, I felt liberated once I no longer had financial goals to worry about.  The job wasn’t so bad when I could spend my time doing more of the things I liked about work without worrying incessantly about my daily/weekly/monthly results and those of everyone who reported to me.  It gave me time to coach and mentor and check in with people (both clients and colleagues) I hadn’t had much time to talk to.  I even helped sell a couple of big projects the last month before I left!   I began spending more time with my friends and activities outside of work, no longer had that low-level work 24/7 anxiety, and was delighted to see my energy and humor come roaring back.  Friends started commenting that I already looked years younger!

And then came August, which, between my birthday and retirement, morphed into one long party.   I was getting calls, emails, and cards from clients and colleagues wishing me well in retirement.  I actually found myself a little over-stimulated (and having trouble sleeping) by all the excitement.  I kept expecting my own grief to kick in once I had to confront actually saying good-bye to colleagues I’d worked with for so long,

I had several retirement celebrations (official and unofficial) and I was surprisingly and genuinely happy at each of them.   It was a little like being at my own funeral and getting to hear the nice things people said about me.  Plus, I realized that I had made some really good friends that would carry over into my retirement life, so I wasn’t that sad about saying good-bye.  And I certainly wasn’t going to miss the job itself.

Most importantly, those four months gave me the chance to honor and appreciate the parts of my job, my company and my colleagues that I really loved and cherished.  So, on August 15, when I walked out the door, that spirit of disillusionment and burnout had been replaced by a spirit of gratitude and pride.  I know that, in corporate America today, few workers get the “gold watch” retirement send-off anymore.  Mine was pure gold, and for that I’ll be forever thankful.

09.12.13
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My Law School Reunion (Part 2): All Roads Lead to The Hut

Face it, one big reason why we go to reunions is to feel young again.  We return to the places where we spent our youth, surround ourselves with the people we were with, tell stories about how awesome we were, and try to recapture a bit of the old magic. In the case of my law school experience, all roads lead to The Hut.

The Hut was a little dive bar just down the road from the law library.   It was really pretty awful; it was old and in disrepair, never clean, with sawdust on the floor, an old juke box that sometimes worked, and a couple of jars with hard boiled eggs and giant pickles on the counter.  As far as I know, no one ever ate anything at The Hut.

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Our beloved Santa Clara dive bar The Hut

But almost every night, after a stressful day of classes and then studying until the law library closed, we would head over to The Hut for a drink before going home.  On Fridays and Saturdays, it might be several.  There was a nicer bar called Lord John’s, even closer to the law school, but we felt like we had to behave ourselves there. I think I drank more alcohol during my law school career than any other time in my life.  And I’m not sure how I still managed to get my JD.

The Hut was where friendships were forged, romances blossomed, broken hearts tended, advice dispensed, and legends born.  Rumor had it that some people actually lived in The Hut when they couldn’t make rent or didn’t feel like driving home during finals.

On the first night of my reunion weekend, I took my husband on a walking tour of the campus, which has changed significantly since I graduated.  The campus has expanded with large modern buildings replacing many of the older smaller ones.  Between the changes and my spotty memory, I was feeling disoriented.  But then I saw it – the Hut – decrepit as ever, surrounded by gleaming new buildings and parking garages.  Like an old ball of dust the vacuum cleaner left behind.  Hallelujah!  Lord John’s was gone, but The Hut survived. I was surprised at the depths of my emotions upon spying that old crappy dive.

Naturally, our reunion was not complete without a trip to The Hut.  As was typical of my law school days, after our class dinner I walked over with several of the guys. (Since my law school class was only 30% women, most of my good friends were male.) When we arrived, the bar was packed, the music blaring, the beer overflowing.  Just like the old days.

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The Nightcap after our Class Dinner —- where else but The Hut

Even though it was by this time well past my bedtime, I was determined to party like my 24-year-old self.  But after less than an hour of screaming to be heard at my 50-plus-year-old friends over loud hip hop (the old juke box full of Stones music was gone and it was unclear who was controlling the music but obviously not a 50-plus-year-old) and getting screamed back at, yet still missing 50% of the conversation, and with my sensory abilities further impaired by beer, I was really starting to miss my 55-year-old self.

Then occurred a collective moment of clarity when one of my classmates abruptly and piercingly announced “Enough!! Time for bed.”  We each breathed a great sigh of relief, said our good-byes and promised to meet at The Hut in another five years God willing.  I headed back to my 55-year-old world, better appreciating the wisdom and relative calm of middle age, but thankful for the brief return to my younger days and with a greater respect for the stamina and energy of youth.