This week I'm contemplating my 40th high school reunion. That part of life has become so distant. Should I revisit it this time? Is there anything left to share?

I certainly would like to see many of those I lived such a momentous time with, but so much water has run under my bridge, is it worth following now, or would that take too much energy? You know there will be fewer and fewer opportunities to go back.

Back to Hickory. I don't know. I don't go there much anymore, since my parents have died and my siblings have moved away.

The old house has been sold, and there's little left there for me. But it was home, the one by which all since have been measured. Its hilly reaches always promised fall would come early, that gift of the Blue Ridge foothills. Another good reason to go, I guess.

But I think what I really want to visit is that noisy clamor of youth, the times when you were sort of practicing for what was to come but you took it so seriously anyway, and I want to revisit the friendships that were anchored in laughter and unconcerned about adult realizations that it all would pass too quickly.

Why shouldn't I go then? Plenty of folks dismiss reunions as just opportunities to preen and be seen. But what about the people? Those stiff-shirted and dressed faces in the yearbook.

Even though you really don't know them anymore, communicating with them, even via e-mail, makes you feel close in some special way — we were young together, after all.

Going back is probably the closest I can get to that singular moment of youthful expectation. While there are many things in life of depth and purpose that will surpass those moments, there is nothing that tops the feeling that everything lay in front of you.

It was like standing at the entrance to your first county fair: What do you do first, what do you ride? Which way do you turn?

I probably need to go.

Golf will be played, a few beers drunk. Laughs will come from the belly from jokes told 40 years before. That weekend you won't need to tell the jokes, only laugh at them again.

Of course, after so many years, we just might begin to look forward instead of backward. Though some of us are gone, what about the rest of us? How have we managed the time allowed us? Have we made the best of it? Are we satisfied? Have we done enough for ourselves, have we done enough for others?

This may well be reason enough for going to reunions. They call the questions of our lives.

I guess I would need a new outfit, something colorful. Maybe a haircut — I'd have to study the yearbooks, too, get up to speed on names — the faces won't be a problem.

I'll remember the faces. And between the reminiscences of the weekend we can all look at each other and read between the lines that time has drawn on us and maybe learn something valuable. You never know.

I guess I need to go ahead with those reservations.

Al Clark is executive editor of The Daily Reflector. Tell him what you think at 252-329-9560 or at aclark@coxnc.com.