Bittersweet

She is so full of energy and joy that we forget for a while how many years have gone by.  Even though we all knew each other very well in that time, she is the catalyst who brings us all together.  She has brought pictures this time, and we watch slides of us taken at the parties and gatherings that were part of our lives back then, in a time before anything bad had happened to us.  Our faces in the pictures are heartbreakingly young; even those who were older than out tight-knit group, whom we thought of as older, peer out with faces we now see as youthful.  Sadly, some are gone, more of them each few years when we get together.  In the pictures, as now, there is wine, but fewer are partaking, mostly avoiding any explanation as to the reasons why.  We all leave for home after a few hours, as an amorphous group.  No signal is given, no explanation needed.
     Memory flits back to the times when no one left until closing time, or dawn, if  a house party. Fridays then meant a party; location was not an issue.  We gathered anywhere, for specific reason or not.  There was a painting party in a new apartment, where we all wore work clothes and wielded a paintbrush; we helped decorate a Christmas tree in a motel unit across the street from the school; we slid on the ice with wind sails at another's home on the nearby lake; some would go on ski outings at the nearby mountain, and our fall-back party site was the Town House, where I was introduced to a drink called a Harbor Light---it was served in a flaming glass.  I never asked how.  A family man, guru to the younger set, had a home with a carriage house, so suited to our party events back then.   In a time before Facebook or email, no invitations were issued; weekends meant an event somewhere. 
     Some of the faces in the pictures we watch tonight are of peripheral people, and we search our memories for their names.  We have lost track of a few  who were integral to our group, and we wonder where they are.  In some of the pictures, the identities of even those present are not clear.  It occurs to us that youth is a blanket which makes us resemble each other, with unmarked  faces and thick hair.  The atmosphere  is upbeat though, mostly because of the joy and  happiness which emanate from the one who is the focal point of the evening, she who is there with her husband, a counterpart of her in every way.  In all the years since, those few years are dominant in our memories:  the way we were, splendor in the grass, the best years of our lives. But as I leave, one who still bears traces of a boyish face and dark curly hair, bids me goodnight and whispers "Bittersweet."