MAY 28, 2026 – Today we climbed out of bed early to make the day-long trek from Minnesota to Maine (via Massachusetts) for my 50th college class reunion. To be truthful, four years ago when I first started hearing about plans for this occasion, my thoughts were focused on the pending stem cell transplant I was scheduled to undergo in late August 2022. The reunion set for nearly four years in the future seemed beyond my reach. I tried to summon sufficient optimism to say with qualified confidence, “I’m going to live long enough to make the reunion.”
This morning when our plane left the ground and headed east, I felt a surge of gratitude: I’d made it to this day. Only for a second on the approach to Logan did I feel it was a dream, a mirage . . . when the plane banked hard to the right, then nearly stood on the tip of its starboard wing. I thought, maybe I won’t make it.
Soon outside the terminal, Beth and I were scooped up by our friends Jeff and Val—Jeff being a Bowdoin classmate and good friend from our first days on campus—for the two-hour-plus-drive to Brunswick. The ride was a non-stop talk trip about pretty much everything under the sun.
One topic that Jeff and I addressed was the art of conversation among the people with whom we’d soon be mingling. The crowd would involve a range of categories:
- Friends with whom we’ve remained in regular contact all these intervening years;
- Friends with whom we were close enough that even decades of no contact would pose no barrier for an immediate resumption of easy and energized conversations;
- Friends with whom we’d been very close but have had no contact since graduation, and the half century of drought has left us in a desert with no map or water.
- Acquaintances who, for various reasons, never developed into friends—and probably won’t now.
- Acquaintances who, for various reasons, never developed into friends but now, after just a sentence or two, common interests, perspectives, experiences, dispositions lead to a wonderfully satisfying conversations that begs for continuation;
- People whose name tags identify membership in our class but whose names don’t ring any bells whatsoever.
- Spouses who share the same level of “stranger” as our own spouses feel.
Striking up a conversation with people in each of the foregoing categories would require a different approach and mindset. Few social engagements, however, can be more interesting and rewarding than a reunion of such people. Everyone has three big things in common with everyone else: a. The Bowdoin class connection; 2. Coming from somewhere, inviting the opening softball question, “So, how far did you have to travel to get all the way back to Bowdoin?” and 3. #2 leading to the next softball question, “Where was home when you were at Bowdoin?” followed by, “What led you from A to B?” or “What kept you in A?” Generally, all you need to be willing to do are two things: (a) Initiate conversation by asking simple questions seeking simple answers to provide information to ask expanded questions; and (b) listen.
In the event . . . The inaugural reception was hosted by a classmate and her Bowdoin alumnus husband (class ahead of ours) at their picturesque farm outside Brunswick. It was so picturesque, everywhere I turned, I pictured a painting. In fact, our classmate, Anne Ireland, is a well-established artist, whose works adorn many very high-end places. It was our first chance to practice the “Art of the Reunion Conversation.” The practice run brought ample rewards. I felt as if I’d gone fishing and landed lots of “bait fish”—the start of conversations that with delight I can turn into longer conversations at subsequent settings during the reunion and in the time that follows. At dinner back on campus following the reception, the encounters—and “bait fish” conversations–continued.
While Jeff, Val and Beth went to the Bowdoin Art Museum to attend the exhibition of a collection of master works donated by a classmate in honor of our class at the 50-year mark, I was dropped off at the Bowdoin Chapel for my first run-through of the piece I’m playing in a memorial service late Saturday afternoon–remembering the classmates whose allocations of sand have run out ahead of what the rest of us have been assigned to our own individual sundials.
It had been over 50 years since I’d last played inside the space of that architectural gem. With no warm-up, my piano collaborator (Lisa Schneider, a classmate, of course!) and I dove straight into the piece—the first of Dvorak’s “Four Romantic Pieces for Violin and Piano.” With the opening phrase, Lisa established her musical bona fides and sustained them throughout our rehearsal. Her talent and experience gave me complete license to work the piece as an irrepressible child works a piece of modeling clay. Little in life can bring lighter delight than making music in this fashion.
Tomorrow, far more of the same, all the way around. (Cont.)
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© 2026 by Eric Nilsson
