It’s been a period of reunions for Cathy and me. Last weekend, Cathy’s side of the family gathered in our native southeastern Illinois. At breakfast, on the day we drove back to Ohio, a woman approached our table. She turned out to be the girl I dated in high school before I dated Cathy. Finally, at the end of this week, Cathy and I had dinner here in Columbus with one of her high school friends and her husband. She and Cathy hadn’t seen each other in forty-nine years.

Such reunions bring up memories of time spent with family members, of young love, and maybe even that special friend—the one you thought would be in your life forever. Of course, when we reunite with people from our pasts, there can be a certain degree of awkwardness. After all, we’re not the same people we were many years ago, but maybe in a fundamental way we are. Maybe whatever it was that first brought us together still exists.

I once ran into a high school acquaintance, someone I hadn’t seen since those days. He’s a minister now, and he told me he often used me as an example in his sermons—an example, he said, of someone who turned his life around. I wasn’t sure how to take that, but I let it be what it was. After some chit-chat, he said to me, “Say that thing you always said.” What thing? I asked him. “Don’t you remember. You’d always come into our geometry class, and you’d point your finger at me, and you’d say, “It is what it is, man.”

I don’t remember ever saying that to anyone, but I didn’t ask if he was perhaps confusing me with someone else. I gave him what he wanted, complete with the finger point. “It is what it is, man,” I said, and then I walked away, leaving him to delight in a memory that was his but not mine.

At the end of this week, I’ll be off to another reunion of sorts. For the sixteenth year, I’ll be teaching at the Vermont College of Fine Arts Postgraduate Writers’ Conference. I’ll be seeing colleagues I’ve shared a week with summer after summer, and I’ll be encountering returning participants who’ve become my dear friends. I probably won’t be sharing new blog posts during the time of the conference, but never fear, I’ll be back when I can.

In the meantime, let me leave you with this writing prompt. Choose someone from your past whom you haven’t seen in several years. If you were to see them, what would you say and/or do? Imagine that scene of reunion. Write it as a piece of memoir (maybe you’ve actually had that experience), or feel free to fictionalize it or put it in a poem. Maybe you’ll begin with something like, “The last (or first) time I saw you, I. . . .” Fill in the blank and keep going.” Or maybe you start with something like, “I always wanted to tell you. . . .” Anything that takes you back into the past with a perspective you didn’t have at the time will work.

Here’s something from a new memoir I’m writing. I’ll see you all in a couple of weeks.

The first time I saw you, it was summer. My parents and I had just moved into our house on West Locust Street. Drainage ditches separated the street from the sidewalk, ditches with deep slopes I’d learn all too well while mowing our yard. A thunderstorm had come up that afternoon. A downpour. A deluge. A toad-strangler. When the rain stopped, the sun came out, and steam rose in wisps from the asphalt street. Water ran, hip deep, in the ditches. You came running down the sidewalk, barefoot, your short, slightly bowed legs, churning, and with a yelp you jumped into the ditch just to feel that water. It was a marvelous thing to see. You came up from the ditch with water streaming from your white tee shirt, your khaki shorts. The sun shone down on you, and in its light you appeared to be blessed. So often, because you were short—shorter than anyone else you knew—kids found it easy to tease and ridicule you. You always fought back even though you knew you’d never win. Maybe that’s why I’ve always remembered how you looked that day in the sunshine. You were completely and purely happy. You stood there grinning, and I knew, even before it happened, you’d dive into that water again.