We pulled up chairs and formed a circle. Small talk gave way quickly — as if the body told the mind to step aside. What followed was the real talk. The catch-up. The stories. And the laughter that only comes from people who watched you be twenty, foolish, and loved you anyway, maybe even more because we saw ourselves in each other.
Seven of us. We met in college more than forty years ago. For three days last weekend, we sat in that circle and talked — mostly about the people and the place, those acres in the middle of farm country. Two thousand students, nothing to do but be there, no screens to disappear into. We didn't choose each other so much as get stuck with each other, and we made something real of it.
We'd planned bike rides and boating. Doug drove four bikes up from Virginia to make sure we could. In the end, the bikes never moved, staying clustered near the porch — good intentions made before we knew how much power there was in simply sitting still together. The boat sat mostly at the dock. Nothing was allowed to pull us away from the circle.
Some of us hadn't seen each other since we left. Didn't matter. Within minutes we were back in someone's apartment on a Sunday afternoon in 1985.
That's the thing about being known that young. Known before the storms of life had shown up on the horizon. Eighteen, unchaperoned for the first time, naive, and open to it all. Finding our people to walk with — through whatever came next.
A week out, the echoes are still there. The texts still come, every day.
We're still walking, together.
— Pete
P.S. - Notes will arrive every other Sunday from now on, as I am spending time working on a new book.
Notes arrive every other Sunday
•
About me, and Practice Notes → here
About Integrative Coaching → here
About my book, The Why of Sports → here
