Reunion

My friend Helen is so good about keeping in touch with old friends and she is so good about helping us all get together with each other. Twice a year Helen organizes a reunion of grammar school and high school classmates. In the Fall she usually organizes the reunion in a restaurant, she reserves the place, she contacts all the 'girls', she collects the money and makes all the arrangements, she goes through old yearbooks collecting pictures of those who will be attending, she makes up name tags with our 'Senior Pictures' and maiden names to make it easier for us to match names and faces, she still has her yearbooks from all four years and she totes them along, she organizes a 'Christmas ornament exchange' between the girls, she organizes car-pooling for us, she encourages us to bring any old pictures we have of our school days, and she reminds us to bring recent photos of our family, and at the reunion she will hand out to each of us a list of our classmates home addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses so that we can keep in touch throughout the year! Whew!
In addition to all this, Helen is constantly on the hunt trying to track down and contact even more classmates to add to the group, and every Summer Helen hosts another reunion for us in her home!

I just attended the Fall reunion a few weeks ago and it was wonderful! Such fun to reminisce, and to catch up on each others' lives and families, to celebrate our milestones, and so touching to share our heartaches and console one another, and nice to talk about future plans.

(Unfortunately I forgot my camera! But those who remembered were kind enough to post their pictures on Facebook, so I was able to copy a few.)

About thirty girls attended this reunion:

(Helen is seated on the far left of this picture in the black and white top.)

One of the girls had this picture of the school, the main entrance was for Seniors only:


Ann brought along her uniform!



And it still fits her!! Lucky girl!!






Here's Helen again, with Amada, Maria, and another Helen (Helen on the right very kindly gave five of us a ride to the reunion!)



The girls on the right are twins, Mary and Joan, and I went to school with them from fourth grade through Senior year in high school!




The food was delicious, reuniting with friends was so sweet, getting reacquainted was amazing, and the time went much too fast!

I think you might recognize the 'girl' in the middle of Jill and Anita, but...


...I'm not sure how many at the reunion recognized me! I guess I've changed a little!

(My Senior Yearbook picture, taken thirty-eight years ago.)

When we arrived we each dropped our wrapped ornament on a gift table, and as each of us exited we would pick out a gift at random. Helen feels it is such a nice reminder of our past and our friends as we hang each ornament on the tree and she is so right.
This year I unwrapped this beautiful angel ornament:


I don't know which former classmate chose to give this ornament because there was no card or tag enclosed, but I'm grateful to whoever included this ornament for the give-away!




Inscribed on the angel is this quote that was printed on the back of the box:

Good women ~
may we know them,
may we be them,
may we raise them!

I thought it was so appropriate for the gathering of these good women!