I spent the weekend with four of my oldest friends, in Isle of Palms, South Carolina.

This is an activity I highly, highly recommend. And a place I recommend, too. What a great weekend it was. I sort of feel like I’ve been coasting on the high of good times with old friends ever since.

I was not the organizer, and, in fact, I might have missed out entirely due to never opening Facebook, but one of said friends (Lauren) reached out to me a few months ago and said, “Hey, we’re planning another mini-reunion on FB, if you want to come.” I immediately jumped into the messages threads and offered my two cents (Napa Valley in July: absolutely not. South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, all lovely possibilities.)

A friend more organized than me (Beth) found an airBnB in Isle of Palms (which is right near Charleston) with enough beds for six people, a swimming pool, and walking distance to the beach; all votes were yes, a reservation was made, and four friends flew in — from Vermont, New York, Michigan, and Wisconsin — while I drove up. It was a long drive, and totally worth it.

We did a couple obligatory tourist activities — shopping at a market for a couple of hours, visiting the night heron rookery and seeing the beautiful row houses in Charleston — but mostly we floated in the pool and talked, and talked, and talked some more.

And ate good food, of course. The first night was grocery store salad for me and sandwiches for the others; the second night was deep-dish pizza and salad at a restaurant owned by Lauren’s family (cauliflower crust pizza for me, but the company made it excellent); and the third night was unsurprisingly, my favorite, at a restaurant that takes GF seriously, and had so, so, so many options including a really delicious chocolate cake for dessert. I had to eat the leftovers for breakfast the next morning, which was delightful. Chocolate cake for breakfast, two thumbs up.

I went swimming in the ocean a couple of times, and loved it. I’m not a huge fan of ocean swimming, because the ocean is enormous and powerful and filled with uncertainty. Also, you know, despite lots of practice in managing my anxious imagination, thoughts of sharks and riptides and jellyfish always pop into my brain when I’m in the ocean. But it was so incredibly nice. The water was a perfect temperature, the waves were a perfect height — lifting me off my feet, but never knocking me over. The second time I went I was in the water by myself (although with friends on the beach) and the sun was just rising, and it was so spectacularly gorgeous and vivid and serene. All senses fully engaged, all of me completely present in the moment I was in.

That was the morning that we were leaving, and when we got back to the house, everyone was packing up. But I was in my bathing suit still, and we had plenty of time for the limited amount of packing that needed doing, so I headed for the pool, and then everyone else came outside too, for one more hour of pool floating and chatting, much of which was spent focused on when and where we were going to meet again.

Next month, or maybe at the tail end of this month, it will be forty years ago that I met these women. We lived together for one year and then our lives veered off in different directions. On the surface of things, I’m not sure we have a lot in common. But it turns out that the bonds formed during that one remarkable year are stronger and more sustaining than I realized. It’s been five years since we last saw one another and they were hard years, in their own ways, for all of us. (Honestly, the COVID years were hard years for everyone, weren’t they?) But it felt so rejuvenating to share the stories of those pains & fears, and then to move on to appreciating the moment we were in.

Now that I’m home, I’m back to the usual stuff: playing with Sophie, writing with my writing buddies, mowing the lawn, laundry and unpacking, grocery shopping and cooking, and, of course, working on my Choosing Happiness projects. But among the things that I am definitely going to get to will be uploading lots of photos, and making everyone else share their photos, too. I took some beautiful sunrise pictures, but I was never the person who handed my phone to a stranger to take a picture of all of us, so I don’t have a single group photo. Birds and sunrises are nice, but I do want the reminder of the people, too, because the people were what made the weekend so special.