Who: Four college friends – Penelope, Lindsay, Jennifer, Melissa (yes, those are our real names)
What: A weekend away
When: 1986
Where: Martha’s Vineyard
Why: Why not? We were all young and unmarried, if not unattached. My boyfriend, for example, was spending the entire summer in Europe. A perfect chance for a girls’ getaway.
Starting today, we reprise that weekend with the same cast of characters, in the same place, to celebrate turning 50, which some of us are doing this year. One of us on July 10. We were in each other’s weddings, we are godmothers to each others’ children, and the godsiblings keep up with each other, cross-country, sometimes in person, mostly via Facebook. The fact that our connections to each other now extend to the next generation is just exactly what we were hoping for back in 1986, when we were sunfried, wearing blue eyeliner, and in our 20′s.
My friends sweetly and generously hatched all of this behind my back, with full inclusion of Chris in the planning. I know we will laugh until we cry, stay up talking until we literally conk out, share memories in a shorthand that only the four of us understand, and return to our four different cities, four different husbands, and 11 different children restored, refreshed, and ready for, hmmm, the next 50 years. We should be so lucky, right?
