Sisterhood

I was an AOPi Sorority girl in the days of Big Hair and The Mullet. The Preppie Look was popular; our collars raised north, though a few free spirits on campus dressed like Madonna. Blue eyeshadow abounded; the bolder, the better. We fast-danced to Michael Jackson, and slow-danced to Whitney Houston, piped from our cassette players. Reagan was president, times were peaceful, (Sing it, “We Are The World.”) and the future looked bright. It was a very good time to be a college co-ed.

Sorority Sisterhood was sweet. We had a beautiful newly renovated, newly decorated sorority house. We rotated rooms and roommates every semester, sharing class notes and padded-shouldered sweaters and heartbreaks. We’d primp together for parties while blasting “Paradise By The Dashboard Light.” In moods of sappiness we’d light incense, drink forbidden Riunite in plastic cups and talk about boys while listening to The Carpenters.

We attended numerous toga parties and barn dances and road-trip formals. We raided Fraternity houses for their composite pictures, built floats for the Homecoming Parade, and whooped it up at football games. And in between the fun we squeezed in Rituals and philanthropies, homework and classes, walking together the distance from house to campus while we shouldered heavy backpacks.

Having brothers back home, I relished the Sisterhood. We had each others’ backs. There was always someone around and available to join you in whatever you were doing, from watching the soaps to walking home from the library after dark. It was a unique bond and I knew it was special.

Yesterday I had lunch with five of my AOPi Sorority Sisters, with whom I’d reconnected through Facebook. We met at a midway-point restaurant. It had been over two decades since I’d seen four of them, but we caught up on our lives over pastas and salads. We reminisced and laughed at old pictures. I cringed at my hairstyle and wondered about the young man with whom my teen self was laughing. (Who was he?? I have absolutely no memory of him!)

Twenty-someodd years from college graduation to the present is a lot of living. It’s a multitude of hairstyles and hair colors and fashions. It’s fledgling independence and budding careers, marriages beginning and sometimes ending, and babies born and raised and launched. It’s a thousand relationships and experiences. It’s quite a bit to share between six chatty ladies at a two hour lunch. But we touched on the highlights; the marriages, the children, the jobs. And we plan on another reunion in two months, and making this a regular event.

On driving home, the song came to my mind that we’d sing as we’d pass around the Loving Cup.......
We'll pass the loving cup around
We won't pass a sister by
We all drink from the same old cup,
In Alpha Omicron Pi,
Oh you and I shall never grow old
While this fair cup is nigh.
Here's health, here's wealth,
Here's happiness......
In Alpha Omicron Pi

Ahhh......good times. Special times.