Prose-titution: The Dirty Dozen

About a hundred years ago, I kissed my mother good-bye and climbed to the second floor of Denison University's Stone Hall to meet my fellow freshmen for the first time. By the end of the second week, twelve of us had become friends--gathering nightly in one suite or another, playing bridge, dishing, sharing experiences. We called ourselves the "Dirty Dozen" for reasons no one remembers, and as semester followed semester, our friendship grew. We borrowed clothes and class notes; we found each other dates; we celebrated each new romance and mourned the breakup of old ones.
Two left school to marry in junior year. Two more transferred to other colleges. The remaining eight of us graduated together, eager to begin our adult lives yet vowing to write, to visit, to call. A few of us went on to graduate school; all married and started families. Our lives diverged, and eventually we lost touch.
One day in 1983 my mother called from Ohio to say that a letter for me had arrived at her home, where I hadn't lived for more than twenty years. One of the Dirty Dozen was trying to locate the others with the thought of planning a reunion--no easy task given that we had scattered to California, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Florida, Massachusetts, Ohio, New Jersey, and London.
Thanks to her persistence, a date for the first gathering since graduation was confirmed. All we needed was a place to rendezvous. Without missing a beat, my mother volunteered her country home--large enough to accommodate twelve guests and isolated enough that we could make all the noise we wanted. She promised to arrange for a caterer, to ready the beds, and to vacate for the three-day weekend.
On my flight to Ohio I recall wondering what on earth we would talk about. Would we find anything in common after all these years? Since my parents belonged to a country club, I thought if worse came to worst, golf, tennis, and swimming would help to fill the time. This, I said to myself, will either be the longest or the shortest weekend of my life.
My mother and I sat on her screened porch listening for the sound of a car coming up her long, winding driveway, bearing the Cleveland contingent--the first four DD's to arrive. When we heard a "beep-beep," we hurried to the turnabout, our hearts thudding with excitement. There was the Cleveland car, and just behind it another, and another, and another. The Dirty Dozen had converged at my mother's gate within seconds of each other from all over the country! The doors burst open, and twelve young girls with middle-aged faces flung themselves into each other's arms, laughing, hugging, weeping, and laughing some more.
We never used the tennis courts. We ignored the pool. We put on our pajamas after dinner and didn't change out of them until the next afternoon. Among us we counted eight original husbands and four replacements; three teachers and two realtors; eight Republicans, one Democrat, and an Independent; six golfers and one sailor, two agnostics and five Protestants, two smokers, ten pairs of pierced ears, twenty-three breasts, six uteri, and one person who, until then, had never heard of the "G-spot." We talked and laughed until our voices grew froggy and our faces cramped. It turned out to be the longest and the shortest weekend of my life.
Since that remarkable first reunion twenty-eight years ago, the DD has met every summer in a variety of locales from a rustic house in the Michigan woods to a borrowed beach house on Cape Cod. Every weekend we spend together enriches our lives and strengthens our bond. We remain the Dirty Dozen, even though two of our members have left the world.
How can I explain what this sisterhood means to me? Now that much of life--homemaking, child rearing, career building--is behind us, we have--as Ossie Davis predicted--"become more than ever who we always were." But when we gather for our weekends, it's not to reminisce. Nor is it to discuss husbands or grandchildren or aging parents or, God help us, the state of our health. It is to measure our own lives against the those with whom we share a common history, to seek information only a same-age sister can provide.
Last weekend we met in Pennington, New Jersey, to update each other about ourselves and to own what scares us, excites us, makes us sigh with pleasure. As always we gave voice to our plans and dreams, revealed what's working and what's not, and listened to each other without judging. And that's what the Dirty Dozen does best.

Dede Sally Susan Carole Lee Lyda Rhea