Old Friends

Went out for coffee this morning with Jack, Charlie, and Melissa and Alisa, two women I knew in college, and two of their kids, a 3-year-old and a 2-year-old. Melissa also has a 6-year-old, who was in school, which has to be a slightly odd feeling. Or at least I'm guessing it will be for me.

I hadn't seen either of them in probably around 12 years, and only once or twice since college, which was a few years longer than that. We were all in roughly the same crowd of drinkers, slackers, and people who got together to do both of those things and occasionally cut each other down with sarcastic humor and the like. All in good fun, or at least most of it. Most of us drifted off in our separate ways and tend to only see each other sporadically at weddings. They both live in Denver and a mutual friend had ultimately gotten us back in touch.

So the three of us sat and drank coffee at a patio table in the sun, while their three-year-old and two-year-old careened around, shared control of a pair of sunglasses, and alternately showered affection on Charlie like he was a stuffed animal and avoided him like he was some great beast, both of which he kind of is. Jack remained in the stroller where he drank his water, ate an entire banana and hunk of coffee cake, and then developed a fascination for my ice coffee straw, followed by the ice coffee itself, which I kept from him in part because he was due for a nap in a couple of hours and I didn't want to have to scrape him off the ceiling to get him into his crib.

And the funny thing is that none of us have really changed all that much since college, not really anyway. I mean, we're all much better-looking, smarter, and wildly successful, but we're largely the same people. Except we each have these tiny children who are running, or crawling, or otherwise clamoring around us. And they're totally dependent on us, a bunch of former stay-up-all-night, drink-to-excess college kids who didn't pay enough attention in class and - speaking for myself - didn't really think about having kids one day; didn't even like kids particularly, in fact.

The funny thing is that when I was in college, I didn't really appreciate the friends I had. I took them for granted, I forgot about most of them when I left, and I certainly didn't think that more than 15 years later, 2000 miles away, I'd be sitting drinking coffee with a couple of them while our kids ran around us. And enjoying it. Not wishing I was off somewhere having a beer or sleeping. (That came later, after two hours in 80 degree heat and sun, when Jack was actually taking his nap and I lay down on the couch and either slept or watched an old episode of Star Trek, which is essentially the same thing.)

Jack's only 15 months old, but I already owe him a lot. Because before Jack, I think, I cared mostly about myself, and my life, and my own happiness, often at the expense of others. Today, through totally and utterly falling in love with him, I find myself caring more about others, and my family -- all of them, Emily, my parents, my sister and her family, my in-laws -- and my friends, with kids or without them. Not caring because I feel I should or caring because it's the right thing to do, but caring because I actually do. Having one little person totally dependent on you reminds you that a lot more people are important than just the ones who do things for you, and who you see every day. We are all in this together, and it's nice to think that even if you wasted a lot of time and mistreated a lot of people in college, it's not too late to find them again, sit and catch up, and let your kids play together.

Who knows, maybe one day they'll all be off at the same college drinking, slacking off, and cutting each other down. And having coffee together 15 years after that. You never know.