by Linda Campbell Rehmann

Created on: January 09, 2009

In high school, my family's boat was a refuge for me and my friends. A gang of us would head up 3 or 4, 7 or 8 and descend upon my parents' retreat like a swarm of locusts armed with cases of beer, bags of chips, and boxes of tapes. My guy friends were all 6'3"-plus basketball players, so they were not easy to cram into various bunks. Typically a number of people ended up sleeping on the top deck. But my parents didn't seem to mind; they were party people, relishing their Purple Jesus (grape KoolAid and grain alcohol) parties of the early 70s. Besides, they enjoyed our retro music choices; Neil Diamond, the Who, Jim Croce, and put up with my Bruce Springsteen.

We had one final bash up at the boat the weekend before I was to head off to university. I was leaving first, due to my academic schedule, and was one of only two heading to the States, so it was a significant departure. The entire weekend sits in my memory as a tangle of bodies in the sun, and then beneath the stars, under a constant din of laughter and sarcastic banter. We drove home to Ottawa after our hedonistic weekend, crammed into a car with the radio blaring and covered with suntan lotion, bug bites and fake Wayfarers, breathing in so much life that it was palpable. My best friend sitting next to me suddenly burst into tears.

"This is it," she said. "You're leaving. This is over."

My eyes welled up. I put my arms around her and squeezed in the tears. Janet was always ahead of the curve; smart, thoughtful, doing a semester abroad in high school. She saw it coming before the rest of us.

This was it. We were a very close group and had each chosen the school that was right for us; none of us ending up at the same one. But until that moment the all-powerful, unquenchable strength of our youth and potential had blinded us to what we would be leaving behind as we headed off on our own. At that point, our families were important and our parents instrumental, but our friendships were our lives. Once we left, would we ever recapture them? Was it possible to forge the same bonds in a new place with new people who didn't know us as well? How could we expect to be understood by someone who didn't see us drunk for the first time at Rob Thurger's house from an overdose of "Pink Ladies" (peach schnapps and pink lemonade)? These people knew me back when I was a scrawny, awkward Grade 9, they were there for me as I made the basketball team, didn't disown me when I stuck my tongue down the throat of my first serious

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