Lennon Was Right: Life Happens While We're Making Other Plans

Sometimes, fate catches up with us despite our best efforts to run away. I am reminded of that point this morning after my wife, Eileen, and I enjoyed a lovely evening in the charm-drenched, upscale small town of Winter Park, Florida, joined by a longtime friend of mine, Chris, and his lovely wife, Mary. During the 1960s, Chris and I had bonded as best friends over timeless obsessions: a teen fascination with pretty girls, the many high-horsepower offerings from Detroit, and grades that would lead us to coveted college student military deferments that saved many of us from a growing quagmire in Vietnam that killed more than 50,000 of America's young men.

Our stomping grounds, a rough, working-class part of New Haven, Connecticut, called West Hills, was no guarantee of inheriting the American Dream. Homes there were cheap, small and cramped; fathers worked as cops, teachers, mechanics, house painters, and butchers, as well as drunks and philanderers; and moms were, well, mothers, wives, saints. It was the 1960s; youth was on the rise as a force to be reckoned with. The Beatles and Rolling Stones were our adoptive American Idols, and a young president was our Camelot knight in shining armor who stood between us and the threat of certain nuclear annihilation.

As we faced our high school years, Chris and I embraced the diversions of youth even as the losses mounted: John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Robert F. Kennedy, all cut down by assassins. Some of our close friends and family members came home from their Southeast Asia nightmare, maimed physically and mentally, if they returned at all. We learned to look away, and to keep moving ahead of the wave threatening to overtake us. Counting the number of Corvettes and Porsches passing by and imagining owning one was a self-serving lifeline in an age of social upheaval and insanity.

After graduation, Chris and I took different paths that would foretell a far longer separation in the years ahead. I went away to study journalism at Syracuse University, while Chris stayed in New Haven and earned a degree in civil engineering. We got back together briefly in 1975 when Chris served as best man at my wedding. After that, Eileen and I lived in Baltimore for a couple of years, while Chris worked in Philadelphia. We reunited for what promised to be a carefree Bicentennial celebration in the birthplace of our country's independence, but it was apparent the time apart had already begun to thrust us further into personal separate places. Eileen and I shortly after moved from Baltimore to Central Florida to pursue career opportunities and raise a family. Chris went back to New Haven and a successful career as a construction manager for Yale University and a family of his own. The Bicentennial weekend proved to be our last visit for more than three decades.

Then in 2010 Chris came across my profile on LinkedIn and e-mailed me. Only months later, in May of this year, my father died. Chris was there by my side for greatly appreciated emotional support during the wake, funeral and burial. Some things in life happen for reasons we can never fathom, yet we must acknowledge them as the little miracles they certainly are. Chris's return was one of those moments for me. A father gone, a friend reconnected.

So it was fond childhood memories, but no heavy baggage. And, of course, even with my current foray into blustery blogging about politics and governmental morality within LiberalOutposts.blogspot.com, Eileen's meaningful glance with burning eye contact at one point reminded me there should be no talk of politics or religion. The reasons for our long midlife separation no longer matter.

As we sat down last night at a fantastic Thai restaurant called The Orchid, the world of West Hills seemed light years behind Chris and I. The four of us aging yuppies had fun recalling our younger selves, the bluster of youthful victories won and disasters averted. Each of us understood the important ground rule for occasions such as this: friendships are fragile, perishable, and problematic, but also precious and worth preserving.