REUNION (PART III)

MAY 31, 2026 – (Cont.) At Logan maybe it was the hard plastic bins dropping down into the pick-up slots below the conveyor belt; OR . . . perhaps it was the young TSA man barking sharp directives with such volume they sounded like reprimands before I’d done anything wrong; OR . . . another grim possibility: I’m simply getting older; BUT . . . in the commotion of emptying my pockets, yanking my laptop out of my briefcase inside my tough canvas Bowdoin 50^th class reunion complimentary tote bag, removing my jacket, then stuffing all my stuff into one . . . two . . . three bins and . . . in the nick of time, removing my fingers from the edge of the last bin before the next person’s heavy laden bin smashed into mine, I was feeling disturbed, uneasy, out of sorts. Just then, amidst the barking and banging, I caught sight of my black oversized rectangular violin case tipping its bin forward, reminding me of the dark stern of the Titanic as it rose high out of the icy waters of the North Atlantic.

“It’s fragile!” I yelled, as I saw the TSA barker (mis)manhandle the case. (The one-size fits all bin supply clearly wouldn’t accommodate the dimensions of my violin’s protective outfit, which is why I’d laid the case flat on the conveyor belt. But oh-h-h-h no! Everything must go in a bin, even if it tips the bin over.) As I watched the scanner swallow the Titanic and the rest of my stuff and heard more unintelligible directive-reprimands, I regressed from feeling out of sorts to thinking I was going crazy. Before I could self-declare out loud, however, the (younger) gentleman just ahead said, “It’s enough to make you crazy!”

“Agreed,” I said calmly, proud of my self-control.

But my inner pride was premature. On the other side of the scanner, the same commotion repeated itself, except in reverse, and as bedlam reigned again in the crush of my rescuing stuff from the outrun of the conveyor belt . . . my phone rang. I laughed out loud. To myself I joked that it was all a set-up; a random Medicare cognitive test with a single question: “Can you handle this?”

Like a pre-school teacher attaching a group leash to our three-year-old-grandson and the rest of his pre-school buddies before a walk, I gathered my things and herded them to a nearby bench where I could regroup and see who was calling. The phone kindly kept ringing so I wouldn’t have to read or listen to voicemail. Dropping the tote bag to free a hand, I drew the device from my pocket. I recognized the area code ((617)) but not the number. The caller I.D. was simply “Massachusetts.”

“Eric Nilsson?” I said with puzzlement.

“This is the Massachusetts State Police, and we just got a message from your Apple watch that you were in some sort of trouble.”

“No, no, yes, I mean no,” I said, trying to remember what I’d done with the darned watch. “I’m okay. I just got a little . . . snagged [I’d wanted to say “discombobulated”] in the airport security line.”

“Oh,” said the officer. “The watch alarm must’ve gotten pressed accidentally.”

Or, I thought . . . by some kind of mental algorithmic telepathy the alarm button had been hit very “intentionally.” But instead, I said, “Yeah, that’s it, I’m sure.”

In fact, I wasn’t sure. One of my last conversations at my Bowdoin College 50^th class reunion had been with Liza Graves, who’s led a life of high achievement, but despite the contrary vibe of her name, has an infectious sense of humor and . . . here’s the end of the drum roll . . . during college was something of a champion prankster. She knew the same about me (the prankster part; I’m still working on the “life of high achievement”), and it crossed my mind that perhaps Liza was pranking a fellow prankster by putting someone up to calling me, posing as a Massachusetts State Police officer, at the very moment I was about to lose my mind. As in comedy, to pull a successful prank, timing is everything.

After putting my phone away and gathering my belongings again, I hurried along to catch up to Beth, who’d already reached the gate for our flight back to Minnesota. (Wiser and more motivated than I, she’d long ago procured a TSA pass for expedited airport security clearance.)

While waiting to board, I pondered how my near discombobulation[1] in the security clearance process had mimicked the cumulative effect of a four-day 50^th college reunion: Disrupting the semi-organization of my pocket contents by dumping them hurriedly into a large plastic bin as the next bin crashed into it was like so many conversations that started in the middle of something and shared information one layer down, then two layers down, over lunch, when you say . . .

. . . “Oh, hold on, just a sec, I need to run back and get some utensils,” then as you stand up, your spouse says, “While you’re up could you get me a glass of water?” and you say, “Sure,” and on your way back to the table, with utensils in one hand and a glass of water in the other, yet another classmate sees you, calls out, and oh my gosh, but you can’t believe it, that after all these years you’re seeing So-and-so again, and isn’t it grand, and so you put the utensils and the glass of water down on the empty end of an adjoining table so you can shake hands, hug, and start in on a conversation, but after hearing what you’re hearing, you say, “Whoa! Holy cow! I’ve got to hear this through! But hold on . . . My spouse is waiting on this glass of water . . . Oops! Where did it go? Shoot! I’ll have to go back for more,” whereupon you remember you’d left a previous conversation hanging, along with your lunch, which can be devoured gracefully only with utensils, which you misplaced with the glass of water, so you turn back to So-and-so and say, “Look, we’ve got to catch up, let’s . . .” but right then So-and-so’s friend from such-and-such, which was outside your Bowdoin experience, appears, nabs So-and-so’s attention, because they haven’t seen each other in half a century either, and so you go back for new water and utensils, then back to your original table, except the person with whom you’d been enjoying the original conversation (albeit starting somewhere in the middle) has now disappeared—along with your spouse, who decided to get her own glass of water.

And so on and so forth. It can be a long haul, especially when food and beverages are involved. And after a day-long string of truncated conversations, any one of which could easily stretch out over hours, you begin to say out loud, “It’s enough to drive you crazy.”[2]

Among us alumni celebrating our 50^th reunion, the truncated conversation phenomenon was but one of the many common experiences. Eventually, these experiences will coalesce into a deeper understanding of our friendships; of ourselves; of the trials and triumphs of life; of our successes and failures; our pain and joy; and how our individual life experiences, rooted for a time in the same soil, were gathered in a shared bouquet in a single vase, unified in time and place. In the grand scheme of our lives, the bouquet lasted for an infinitesimal fraction of the time devoted to its superb arrangement; only three day’s total waking hours of moments, really, soon to be swallowed by time’s dark maw.

Yet in each person’s memory, those moments and the color, the fragrance of that bouquet will last to the end of life.

Toward the end of the reunion, I realized I’d not replied to the texts sent over the two past days by our 10-year-old granddaughter. She’d had to text Beth to ask “Why hasn’t Grandpa texted me?” She is the delight of our lives, and I was disappointed in myself when I read her inquiry to Beth. Yet, my omission was also evidence of the profound impact that the reunion had on my psyche. The experience had temporarily displaced all other considerations.[3]

In synthesizing all the events, encounters, and conversations of the reunion, I’ve identified about two dozen discrete features that I believe will hold meaning—some coupled with amusement—for the full range of my readership, Bowdoin and non-Bowdoin people alike. For a while I’ve been in search of a subject that could fuel an extended series of the sort I’ve developed in the past. The Bowdoin reunion has now supplied me with abundant material for just such an effort.

Stay tuned . . . and in tune. (Cont.)

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© 2026 by Eric Nilsson

[1] There! I got to use the word with no inhibition.

[2] Yet, not as crazy as standing inside the enormous hospitality tent at ground zero of alumni weekend operations. About 20 feet wide and maybe 100 feet long, inside you could help yourself to snacks and beverages. On one occasion my good friend Jeff Klenk and I walked through the length of the tent as a shortcut to our destination. At that time, the tent was filled with an elbow-to-elbow crowd. Based on appearances alone, we could see that it was predominantly a much younger crowd than us “50^th” folks. But even one wearing a blindfold could readily discern the relative youth of the crowd: the pitch of the chatter was higher than ours and far more animated. But its salient feature was VOLUME. The deeper into the tent we needled our way, the louder the din. By the time we reached the far end, I felt as if we’d walked into the heart of some über beehive in a science fiction movie, wherein the bee-buzz was at killer decibels. No one seemed to notice the paradox that with so many conversations occurring at once, none could be possible—or so it seemed.

 

[3] I hadn’t read a stitch of news, either, or answered a single business email, or participated in the barrage of communications among family members in the U.S. and Sweden, as the next generation nurtures family ties via a reunion the same weekend as the Bowdoin 50^th.