What happens when 5 girls in their mid-40s get together at an OBX cottage for a mini high-school reunion? The question, answered 7 months later. . .

The "Outer Banks Skanks" on their first reunion vacation.

Well, first they spend an entire evening talking and laughing and catching up on the last 27 years. Then they spend a long weekend talking and laughing and building some good time memories to look back on over the next 27.

Deep down we’re still the same girls we were back in high school. Pam is still goofball hilarious, Steff can deadpan a one-liner that gets ya rollin’ in laughter, Debra has a million dollar smile that would stop a train and a fierce loyalty that stops your heart, and Lee Lee carries a slightly shy demeanor that belies the fun-loving yet strong and confident woman within. They might disagree but I’d say I still tend to watch it all from the sidelines, move front and center, and then sideline again, more an observer than a leader most times.

But over the last 3 decades we’ve become so much more than those things that so obviously and maybe, erroneously defined us. Steff, who I thought was a definite party girl, never drank in high school, and really still doesn’t. She’s married to the love of her life. Together they’ve raised three awesome kids, and she keeps a pretty strict, and pretty fast-paced, regimen of walking. Lee Lee moved to Colorado for college and blossomed into a blonde-haired Harley-riding cancer fighting kool-aid mom to her three fantastic teenage kids and their friends, and has proven that she ain’t skeered to take on whatever challenges her, but she’s gonna enjoy life to the fullest while doing it, too. Pam took the higher education route to Hawaii, earned her master’s degree in early childhood special education, then married an equally creative and endearing soul and is mom to two adorable toddlers who will probably also be voted Class Clown someday. And Debra has a love of a husband and an absolutely sweetie of a daughter who shares that breathtaking smile, and she gets together every Sunday for dinner with her mom, stepdad and sister and her family. Four amazing women, four amazing lives.

One of the things that struck me about our weekend in the Outer Banks was the way that we all still connect as the friends and girls we were then, with the giggles and the goofiness and the comfortable fit. We can tear up on some group email time. But beyond that, there is so much more than there was back in the day. Maybe it comes from each of us knowing ourselves so much better than we did back then, or maybe it’s just the knowledge that there is a tie that binds, and it’s there because we want it to be. We make the effort to stay in touch because we truly are richer for having each other in our lives. We’re each a connection to our own memories of the past, and familiarity but even more than that, I think we’re each connected to the other by a silk strand of friendship that flows from one to the other and back again, invisible but intertwined and all the stronger because of it. I know that I have come to love having these women in my life.