RIVER CITY JOURNAL: A VERY BUSY WEEK, BUT THE BEST IS YET TO COME

Wow! what a week!

First there was Riverfest, the first one since you moved to Cape Girardeau. In spite of some weather flubs, it looked like everyone was having a good time. In this day and age, that's remarkable.

(By the way, does anyone know what "in this day and age" really means? Something to ponder.)

Your own personal Riverfest highlight came Saturday afternoon as you and your wife were looking at the crafts on the courthouse lawn. As you crossed the street to go home, a woman's voice hailed from across the street. It turned out to be someone you had gone to high school with. That was a long time ago. Her husband, another high school classmate, was also a former student of your mother's at a one-room country school near your favorite hometown. A lot of years have passed since those school days. But you know what? Neither of them have changed much. Oh, there's some gray in everyone's hair these days. It's better to think of it as a fashion trend rather than a sign of growing up.

Father's Day is coming up in this busy time of the year. You're all for fathers. They don't get many mushy greeting cards though. Those mostly go to mothers. That's the way it should be. Truth is, fathers are just as mushy as mothers, but they don't particularly want anyone to know it, which is why they get cards with drawings of geese and golf courses on Father's Day.

Want to know something that makes a father get real mushy? Looking at a photograph of his children when they were young. You recently acquired a framed enlargement of a photo you snapped about 20 years ago on the first camping trip you ever took your two sons on. They were really small, and you camped on a limestone bluff overlooking a lake in the Ozarks. The boys wanted to sit on the edge of the bluff with their feet dangling over the edge. You, being a worry-wart father, kept reminding them of the dangers of falling off a cliff, one of many lessons you tried to teach them as they were growing up. "I'll hold on real tight," said your older son. The photograph is from behind of two small boys looking out into the lake and the world beyond. They are holding on real tight to their rocky perch -- and to each other. You wouldn't take a million dollars for the memories in the photo.

The day before Father's Day is a big one too. For the first time since before that lake photo was taken you plan to attend your mother's family reunion, the one that has brought aunts and uncles and cousins and spouses and children -- three generations' worth at a time -- to the banks of Big Creek for more than half a century. And you may not be the only one going for the first time in a long while. Your older son, the one who does medical research in Boston about a year at a time and then travels around the world for a year at a time, thinks he may show up at the St. Louis airport Saturday morning. The last time he was at a family reunion was when he was small enough to be held in your lap, which, of course, his great-aunts did a lot of. Won't they be surprised?

And then there is the day after the reunion, which is not only Father's Day, but also your 30th wedding anniversary. Instead of the cream-pie-throwing frenzy your sons arranged for the 25th event, you and your wife will be delaying the celebration for a week until you go to your favorite spot in the world on the Oregon coast where you have been going since 1972.

That's a lot of life crammed into a few days: Seeing high school classmates for the first time in more than 30 years, going to a family reunion after an absence of more than 20 years, having Father's Day memories of a camping trip when the boys were, well, boys, and observing a milestone of marriage that, according to a pact you and your wife made the day you were married, only has 67 years left.

You both thought a 100-year marriage contract was a bit presumptuous.

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.