So I had few expectations for the reunion, a gathering of people I didn't know very well back in the day, and hadn't kept in touch with in the decades since. In my hotel room a hundred yards from the function room where the event had already begun, I even briefly entertained the idea of not going. But I did go downstairs, after making a few preparations. Mindful of Drew Carey's reaction after receiving an invitation to his high school reunion ("Oh, man, six months to lose 30 pounds and get a real job"), I stuck my Nebula nominee pin in my lapel, slipped some freshly printed business cards into my wallet, and straightened my National Zoo panda tie.

Eric Spencer, George Thompson, Matthew Willis, Brenda Thompson

I cannot say it felt as if I had come home. "Home" does not have the same meaning to me as it does for many other people. My parents divorced when I was 8; I was 14 years old the last time I saw my father. He's dead now, something I learned several years after the fact. I have no siblings. There is no physical place for me to come home to; I grew up in a series of apartments. But as my close friends have always been family to me, perhaps this reunion was like coming home.

Home is the place where they know you. It's a collection of shared experience and common memories. For some, home is the house where you slept each night, the squeak of the closet door and the shadows under the basement stairs. It's the little grocery store at the corner and the old man behind the counter, the neighbor across the street, the tree you climbed.

Jake Peters

For me, I realized, home is the French teacher who would rap inattentive students on the top of the head, the gym coach who would order the unwary to go get a bucket of steam, the games of tackle before school. It's the people who smile when they hear about the books written by that shy kid who drew spaceships in the back of his notebook. Home is the woman who teaches sculpting at the high school you both attended; the dorky kid who went on to the Sorbonne; the fellow science-fiction fan who went through several wives before he hung himself; the quiet kid who built a business and a family, got cancer, beat it, and emerged a quiet, peaceful soul; the lawyers and dot-commers and counselors; the girl who can still make you think, "If only...?"

Ron Simmons with Michelle Ungerman Sanders, Jill Abrams Klein, Kate Mounteer

I hadn't seen most of them for 15 or 25 years; a few, I hadn't even thought of in all that time. Others would come up in conversation every year or three; "Whatever happened to...?" Some I recognized right away that night; others, I couldn't understand how I'd failed to recognize them. Many, I never knew back then, and didn't get to know this time around, either. A few, I spoke to more that night than I did during all our years in school.

I took some business cards, made note of some addresses, but knew better than to say, "This time we'll keep in touch." That's all right. Home is a place you leave, but you can always come back.

Michelle Ungerman Sanders, Marcy Lieberman Weisburgh