Golden, girls

It has become, for me, as much a part of November as falling leaves and football: For the 19th straight year, a group of high school friends are taking a weekend to reconnect, rejuvenate and rehash old times.

Shopping at the Ozarks 2012. (From left:) Colleen, Beth, Stacy (standing), Leslie, Janice

What began in 1995 as a way to keep in touch with our friend who had moved to Kansas City has turned into an annual fall event — equal parts pajama party, spiritual retreat, group therapy session and mini-reunion.

Most years, we head to a condo at the Lake of the Ozarks for a weekend of wine, relaxation and the outlet mall. But we’ve made trips to Kansas City, to Hermann, Mo., and to Branson. This year, we’re keeping a promise we made to each other many Novembers ago — when 50 seemed old — to do something fun and exotic for our milestone birthday year.

And so today, I’m waking up in a condo in Orlando, Fla. Exotic? Hardly. But the price is right and we have promised to avoid early-bird specials at restaurants and references to “The Golden Girls.”

And it’s with my oldest and dearest friends in the world: A group of women who graduated from Incarnate Word Academy in 1981 — Janice Vollmer Duncan, Stacy Stelzer Heinsohn, Beth Zang Kopfensteiner and Colleen Lake Scott. I have known two of them, Beth and Stacy, since first grade. That’s a long time. But time is why an entire year can pass without talking to each other, yet we always pick up right where we left off.

The weekends have some constants: Wine, shopping and something chocolate. There’s also indecisiveness over where to go for dinner and what time to leave to get there. But the good part is we know each other’s idiosyncrasies and love each other anyway. It is one of life’s greatest blessings to have friends like that.

We will do a lot of talking throughout the weekend, mostly about our husbands and kids. We will swear we’re going to lose weight by the next reunion, and we will dissect the challenges of life that have hit way too close to home, including loss of some of our parents, a couple of divorces, college expenses, the empty nest.

But there is music and laughter, too. We’ll rehash memories like sitting together at the cafeteria lunch table when our biggest joys were boys and our biggest fear was college. We’ll talk about how we managed to survive those years after high school when we thought we were indestructible. We’ll talk about our darkest moments and greatest achievements.

And this year, we’ll talk about turning 50 and still thinking we’re 32, which is how old we were when started these weekends. I’m sure next year we’ll be back in the Ozarks, but for now it’s all golden, girls.

A version of this column appeared in the South County Times Nov. 14, 2013.