Paul and I spent the weekend in the Catskills with our Best Mates, or a large subset of them anyway. This is the fourth biennial (and I had to look that up) gathering of the clan, and as usual, it was great fun and a needed retreat.

This is a community of people who met on the Internet. The first group coalesced in '94, more or less, and people have been added and have left, but still, most of us go back years. We've had many gatherings, large and small. None of us travel without notifying others in our destination cities that we're coming, and seeing who's free for dinner. Some of us have married each other. We have attended each others' weddings, celebrated each others' babies and grandbabies, mourned the deaths of two of our number and supported each other in more private griefs. We kick in with physical support, moral support and financial support when it's needed. We are a family, and in some ways we function as well or better as any blood-and-marriage family does; certainly we are, as a group, as bound by ties of love and regard and (by this time) history as any family.

In 2002, when my daughter was graduating from high school and had been terrifyingly struck by multiple physical ills and emotional turmoil in the spring, and my sister was losing her battle with cancer with a gaiety and gallantry that put my own grief and weakness to shame, the weekend with my friends gave me 36 hours of peace and healing that made it possible to attend my daughter's graduation and my sister's funeral all within two weeks of each other. When I find something funny or tragic or if I need information on almost any topic you can name, I go to them first. As flawed and ordinary as we all are as individuals, as a group we are something special.

It was a great weekend. We ate prodigiously; everyone brought coolers and good things to eat. We cooked and washed dishes and found room in bulging refrigerators. Between meals we played with the babies and the dogs and the kids (everyone should play chess with a 5-year-old, it's a new perspective on game-playing in general), we discussed politics and the weather and if there really are Yankees fans or if that's just an urban legend. We stayed up late, we strained the limits of our sleeping quarters by fitting people in whereever they fit. We did nothing and we did everything we wanted to do. And we owe it all to the gracious attentions of brooklynite and chi_editrix, who opened their real estate to our depredations.

I'm already looking forward to the next one.