'If you're going to San Francisco, be sure to wear...'

If you know the rest of the lyrics, then maybe you were part of the fabric. Summer of love. 1967. Legend has it that John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas wrote the song in 20 minutes. The Euros embraced it; the song holding #1 on charts across the pond. Back home in the States, the whiff of incense and weed beckoned. Everybody wanted to come to San Francisco.

But, if you missed the wedding then, it's hard to take you on that magic carpet now. You had to be there; the unchecked pandemonium; the liberating self-discovery; the claustrophobic, condensed adventures within the Haight Ashbury.

Lone Mt. College, class of 68. Fuckya! Several blocks removed from the Panhandle, hippie hill, and that infamous intersection. 45th reunion. For approximately 5 hours, down at 'the' wharf, is there any other, past the watering hole along the Embarcadero where most of us bellied up to the bar with our fake id's...colors became more luminescent, edges softer, depth of field: no LSD. Who we had become, expansive; prodigious unfolding mysteries. Generous in the noon light. Dispatched middle-age. Post menopausal. Bound up in a love affair, that spans decades. Like clusters of stars that illuminate and dazzle existentially, migrating in and out of galaxies, we are there. If you're lucky, you can place the face with the name. But, who cares? Intimacy sweeps the room. For those fleeting moments, you remember where you were and who you broke bread with. That is what you take back with you. Resonating. Across the miles.