I get Mike to write me the directions to his place, but when I read them I realize that I didn’t need them at all, I just needed the street address.

I’m in town because Mom is sick in the hospital.  She’s actually so sick that she’s in the ICU.  Dad’s not handling it well at first – he’s freaked out because it reminds him of when both his mom and dad were hospitalized prior to their deaths.  His usual easygoing manner isn’t helping him in this case.  I feel like I’ve helped by being here, even if Mom is sedated.  Dad seems much calmer and I feel like Mom knows I’m here anyway.

I just got back in contact with Mike last week.  We made tentative plans to catch up, but when I decided to come to Toronto I email him and say “I’ll do you one better than just catching up – I’m gonna be in town.”  Half an hour later as I’m pulling into Starbucks to get a coffee for the road my cell phone rings and it’s a 416 area code.  Thinking it may be the hospital I answer and it’s Mike.  We instantly fall into the continuous conversation we’ve been having since we met on the first day of ninth grade.  He tells me that he already had plans Friday night with a bunch of people from high school.  He decides he’s not going to tell any of them about me coming and just make it a surprise.

On the way to Mike’s house I try to find a beer store.  Or I should say Beer Store, as they stopped calling it the Brewer’s Retail a long time ago.  I can’t believe how tough it is to find one, and decide to give up – if they don’t have any at the house, I can just ask them where the nearest beer store is and go back out.  I can’t remember whether Mike was still sober.  I heard some weird stories about him, so I’m playing it cool.

I pull up to the house and it’s kind of insignificant at first – in a later conversation I discover that Mike has paid $1.1 million dollars for the place.  I pull my camera bag and guitar bag out of the back seat and walk up the walkway (looks like he put down fresh stone last fall) and ring the doorbell.

There’s no one who answers, so I meander around the property a little bit.  Looking down one side of the house I see he’s done a bunch of landscaping and there’s a pool waiting patiently underneath a tarp for 80 degree days and happy kids.  Around the other side I don’t see anything.  I’ve never been a big fan of just opening the door and saying “Hello,” so I go back and ring the doorbell again.  This time I hear a kid’s voice and running footsteps.

A child’s face swims into view in the little window beside the door, and then quickly disappears.   A second later the door opens and there is Lorraine, looking pretty much as gorgeous as ever, and as happy and gregarious as ever too.  Mike is still on his way home from work, so I sit in the kitchen and start the catchup process.  I fill Lorraine in on Mom first, then talk to her about Bonnie, and then a little about what’s been going on in my life while getting some info about her kids.  She calls their eldest, Tyler, in and I am amazed at the fact that here is a 15 year old kid who I remember seeing as a baby.  Lorraine doesn’t look like she’s aged 15 years, so it’s like this kid has emerged out of nowhere.  All the kids are shy around the adults in a way that you’d normally expect teens and preteens to be.

Then the door opens and there’s Mike and my god it’s like I’m 23 again and we’re doing one of our regular hangout sessions.  He chats with Lorraine a little bit, checks in on the kids, then takes me around the place a little while chatting with me about Mom and what’s going on with work.  Mike talks a lot about his work, but not in an irritating way – he does a whole bunch of stuff, and there’s a lot of free-association that goes on whenever you’re talking with him.

While I was still in University, Mike and Lorraine started living together, and when they got their first rental house, Mike’s place became a hangout spot for some high school friends.  When Mike and Lorraine moved to Kleinburg and got a bigger house, the hangouts evolved into a regular event of beer, dope, and music in the garage.  In attendance were former high school friends from Father Bressani High School, King City High School, and the McMichael Canadian Collection restaurant, where a lot of us had worked while in college.  I learned a lot about developing my own musical voice there.

Pretty soon after Mike gets home, the rest of the high-school crowd starts arriving.  First in the door is Mike DeBartolo, musician and poet extraordinaire.   DeBartolo was a big writing kindred spirit in Grade 13 Creative Writing, and while I was in university I spent a year playing in a band with him, the unfortunately titled Loose Movement featuring Bum Gravy.  DeBartolo is amazed I’m working for a financial services firm – he expected me to end up like our favorite English teacher, Mr. Stokes, trying to elevate young minds above the ephemeral crap that filled their lives.

Soon on the heels of DeBartolo are Alex and Paul, two other folks from our loose hangout association.  I am introduced to wives, and Mike takes the rest of us on a tour of the basement, which was apparently recently finished.  In Mike’s home office he has three monitors on his desk and one more on his wall, and while it seems second nature to me, the rest of the guys are amazed with the setup.

We then head back upstairs and dinner is served.  I don’t think you could really get a more cliche dinner party scene if you could ask for it – from the time we sit down to the time we get up after dessert we’ve probably spent two to three hours lost in conversation.  We do tons of storytelling and reminscing – bands we played in, gigs we had, stupid stuff we did in high school and college.  I get the unfortunate news that one of the guys I was rather close with in Grade 13 died in a supposed heart attack four or five years ago.  A warm feeling of familiarity washes over me like the sun on a hot spring day – I recall all the days and nights when we used to do this combination of remembrance and catching up.

Finally everyone has to go.  Unlike “the good old days” everyone has kids with sitters that need to be relieved.  After everyone leaves, Lorraine (who is apparently up way past her bed time) says good night.  Mike and I end up in a long coversation where we completely lose track of time.  He is super-proud of his kids, and loves his life immensely.  He talks to me about how he had to get sober or risk losing Lorraine and the kids.  He tells me about all the fun he is having doing his production work, and about how his shrewd business partner has enabled him to make his business profitable far earlier than expected.  He may have the chance to make a movie with HBO, a movie telling the story of something that happened in our college and post-college days.

Finally it’s 1:45 a.m. and I need to leave.  Mike tells me that he might be able to put me up at a hotel in Mississauga the next time I’m in town because he has a couple trade deals with some places.  I walk out into the cold night – it’s supposed to be the first day of spring and it’s 27 degrees out.  As I back out the long curving driveway, I’m happy that it will be less than five years before I see Mike again.