Hilltop Temporal Transportation

The Host and I Surrounding my Wife
The Steeples of Keene in the Distance

We just got back from a truly excellent trip back to my hometown.  We went up on Saturday at the invitation of an old friend who grew up two houses down from me in Keene.  We hadn’t seen each other in almost forty years when we connected two years ago at a high school reunion.  He’s a successful lawyer in Boston and his parents return to Keene to spend the summers and he goes up to help them maintain their house as they get up in years.  Their home is set on a hill with a sweeping view of the valley where Keene is located.  My wife and I linked up with our best friend in Keene to drop off Buddy and then headed up for the party.  This friend is very gregarious and is more than a little impressed with my wife.  We were joined shortly thereafter by my slightly cantankerous friend who grew up two more houses down the street from the lawyer friend so we’ve all known each other since elementary school.  It was so interesting that we could pick up the friendship after a forty year absence without a hitch.  We gathered around the pool and immediately launched into a very animated conversation that was like falling back into the high school cafeteria with the addition of a very lively Panamanian.  My lawyer friend is very protective of his parents, which is admirable, and he escorted us up to say hi to them as they read in a screened-in gazebo.  They are extremely nice people and immediately made us feel welcome as we sat around and talked.  His father had worked at the same place as my father and said I looked a lot like him.  He recounted stories about my father and he rushing back from the office together for a hurried lunch along with another long lost friend of my father called Uncle Charlie.  For a brief moment I was reconnected with my father over the years and my eyes misted up a little.  My friend’s mother was a teacher at the high school we all attended and quickly took charge of the group and “shoosed” the lawyer at appropriate times.  The “young uns” (nice to earn that appellation again after so many years) adjourned back to the pool and the beer to pick up the conversation again.  Shortly thereafter the parents joined us as well which I think genuinely surprised their son.  They quickly overrode his concerns and we soon had a circle of friends that included all of us.  It was a little surreal to be sitting in a group as adults with people who we had had grown up with looking up to as one of the parent sets in the neighborhood.  For just a little while the veil of years was lifted a little as I think the whole group was transported back to an earlier time on Valley Street in Keene.  They stayed with us for a couple of hours and the conversation we shared really made the party for me and my wife as well.  My friend had prepared a croquet court where we played a game in which I finished dead last.  We also tried our hand at Bocce where my wife and I teamed up to be completely dominated but a gauge of how much fun the day was is that I could not have cared less (completely out of character for me).  My friend’s mother prepared a supremely delicious lasagna dinner to top off the evening.  As we headed out for the night, our lawyer friend rode in the car down the hill with us so he could lock up the gate, we thanked him for a truly special time.  The time was an opportunity for my wife, for the first time I think, to catch a glimpse of my childhood that I can never adequately describe.  My cantankerous friend, their son, and myself were little kids again, even if only in our imaginations, and we all felt welcomed as adults by two extraordinarily nice icons of our youth.

My Cantankerous Friend and My Wife

Our Keene Friend and I Surrounding my Wife

The Croquet Game

The Bocce Game

The Poolside Group