The week after the reunion is when you keep them

This essay first appeared in The Stir, our every-other-week newsletter, on October 3, 2026. You can join at simmer.social/stir.

We're coming into homecoming season and you're likely to have a few minor reunions in the next few months. Those are always nice. But if you're looking to stay more familiar with people who show up and those that can't make it, then the week after is when you make it happen.

Here's what will happen. You'll hear about the get together through the usual channels and you'll decide to go. Maybe it will be at a bar, a dinner, a game, a backyard, or maybe something more official like a cohort weekend, a reunion dinner, or tournament. Ten minutes in the years will have collapsed. The jokes will still work. For some, the conversations will pick up mid-thread as if everyone had just stepped out of the room instead of out of your life. Others will fill the gaps with catch-up conversation. Everyone will notice people who aren't there.

And on the way home you'll say what everyone says: we should do this more often. You'll be feeling both reconnected and a bit of regret. Maybe you'll wonder what was really stopping you from doing it before, after all the people were always there.

What disappeared was the occasion: the program, the campus, the job that put you in the same room on a schedule. When that structure ended, the room emptied, and everyone mistook the silence for distance.

So treat the reunion as what it is: proof of life, not maintenance. One evening cannot carry the next few years. What it can do is hand you a window. For about a week reaching out feels natural. The stories are fresh. The warmth is real. Nobody needs an excuse to text. It is the easiest reconnection you will ever be offered, and most of us spend it catching up on email.

Skip the promise to do better. Don't tell them you'll stay in touch, just do it. Promises are heavy, and the week after only needs three small touches:

1. Send the photo. You took at least one. Send it to the people in it with one line about the moment. Not a caption for an audience, a sentence for the people who were there.

2. Follow up on the thing. Somebody told you something that is not finished like an interview, a move, or a kid choosing colleges. Write it down, and when the date passes ask how it went.

3. Reach the one who was missing. Someone you hoped to see did not make it. Tell them so. "You were missed this weekend" might be the most underrated message in your phone and it costs you one sentence.

That is maybe fifteen minutes spread across a week. Do that and the next reunion will not feel like a reunion, it'll just feel like another great time with people you know well.

The reunion proved your people are still your people. The week after is when you keep them.

Be there.