It was a perfectly dreadful, perfectly iconic November day in Amsterdam.  The clouds hung their heavy shoulders and sobbed cold, steady rains.  The trees were down to their last leaves, and the ones which gave up their stubborn hold on their tree branches quickly found themselves pasted to shoes, wheels, and sidewalks.  Still my heart was light and dry because I was leaving it all -- though just for the week -- on my way to reconnecting with old friends from exotic faraway places like Cleveland and Kent, Bowling Green and Orlando.

Walk, train, jog, train, walk, walk, airplane.  I'm ready to fly.

The South of England drifts below, white breakers on populated peninsulas, scattered cloud cover.  It takes about half an hour to traverse this sceptered isle, this jewel of the North Atlantic... When Ireland comes into view, it's white breakers leading directly to patchwork fields, green as photoshop-enhanced brochures... And then, the great expanse of the North Atlantic.

Somewhere south of Iceland, monotony starts to set in.  The hours between half-past one and four o'clock in the afternoon stretch exponentially.  The distance grows neither shorter nor longer.  A trip to the mid-cabin lavatory reveals yellow teeth and eyes, wan skin, the beginnings of little white-headed pimples.  My hair is wiry, greasy, opaquely covering my pale scalp.  I'm in no-man's land.

I can't help but wonder what awaits me on the far side of the Atlantic.  My heart wants it to be a return to 1999:  old friends full of innocence and idealism, no children, no mortgages, no diaspora, watching ice hockey games from the student section, more sheltered from responsibility than I led myself to believe at the tender age of 22.  Before Amsterdam, before heart-breaks and disappointments.  This is what my heart wishes for.  But in my head, I know that it cannot be this way.  Or even if we were able to pull off the requisite pageantry for the course of the reunion weekend -- "for old times sake" -- it could not continue past Sunday, Monday, maybe Tuesday... Much has changed.  Not for better or worse -- just for differenter.

I'm trying to sort out my expectations.  These are good friends, of a rare and aged vintage, that I will be seeing.  I'll be having pizza and playing basketball with men who have shaped me, spiritually, who have known me for the better part of 14 years, who knew me before (and during, and after) I became me.   And I will be visiting many of the old places that served as the scenery for some of the most magnificent times in my life.  Surely, there's something beautiful about the opportunity to be in such environs -- if only for a fleeting moment.  But I don't want to exaggerate or falsely glorify the past either.  I don't want to forget that God has done a lot in my life over the past ten years -- through people and places vastly different, unimaginable and unintelligible to the Eric of 1999.  I don't want to forget that God has blessed me with relationships and experiences, with three children -- three amazing developing people -- since those old days in Bowling Green.  How can we continually remind ourselves that today's "exile" can be tomorrow's "golden years"?!?

Don't forget.  But don't forget to stop reminiscing sometimes, too.  That's my mission for the next week.