Wahsega Valley Farm

40th high school reunion report

I had such a good time time at my high school reunion! Most of the people I'd not seen in thirty years, so it was fun checking out what they looked like and then catching up a bit too. Everyone looked great - and the women hadn't gained weight at all like my friend had warned. And they were friendly and happy and Mike and I stayed four hours!

The picture above is my senior picture from the yearbook. I always hated that picture. The photographer was mean and nasty and I was not a happy camper when he took this picture. I wanted to slap him.

I hooked up with my best friend from back then and she looked just the same to me. We talked and talked and I showed her some pictures from back when we were in high school. I've always taken a lot of photos, so I had some great ones of her to laugh about. We're getting together with two other old friends in about two weeks. These are the girls I used to hang out with all through high school. Part of my old "gang" y'know.

But now to the important stuff: what I wore and how I did my hair! Ha! I decided I wanted my hair to be kind of wild, since it was always sleek in high school. I used to dry it upside down in front of our heat vent in the winter to get it super straight back then. I braided my hair in two braids and then took it down and never combed it. I picked out the ends a bit to fluff it up a little, but for the most part I wanted it to look ropey. I edited the photos to give my white skin (yes, it's just about that white) a bit of an ethereal look to kind of go with the hair. Mike did a great job catching me moving about. This is my favorite:

From the back:

I don't know what the heck I was doing here, but I like how my hair was moving:

From the side:

And here is one of me from the party itself, just of my face. I was sitting with my best friend from high school, Cathy, but she doesn't want her face online, so it's just me. We didn't take a lot of pictures at the reunion; there was just too much to do and people to talk to. I just wish I'd gotten someone to take some pictures of Mike and me together.

I'm just glad I decided to go this year; I almost didn't. I ended up having such a great time.

Preparing to enter the time machine

Tomorrow night is my 40th high school reunion. Yep, it's almost here. I'm really looking forward to the party though I wasn't friends with many people there. I had my own little group I spent time with, but most of them won't be attending. But my best friend, Cathy, will be at this reunion - so I'll see her after thirty years. And I will recognize most of the people there, so that will be fun. Here are a few pictures of me back in high school.

I wonder if they will play the music we listened to back then? Music can really take me back. Then, all I'll need is a whiff of some English Leather cologne to really time travel. I gave Allen English Leather as my very first "real" gift when we were dating back then. Oddly enough, this reunion is going to be held just down the street from where he lived at that time. Old familiar music and smells - whoa, that would be a heady mix.

The party will be fun and I'm sure everyone will look so different. My friend Carol told me that she was shocked at her last reunion, which would have been her 40th or 50th. She said all the women had gotten fat. She is almost 70 and still in shape and was surprised at how all the women had changed. I told her I thought lots would have had face lifts by now, but she said the biggest difference will be their weight - "just wait and see." I don't know... a lot of women my age work out and keep in shape.

I've been fretting about what to wear and how to do my hair. Now the party is almost here and I still don't really know the look I want. I have a "fall-back" outfit that Mike likes a lot, but it's just not doin' it for me the way I want it to. You know how you feel when you're wearing clothes that fit perfectly and project just the look you want? The exact you you want to project? It makes you look pretty, approachable and confident? And your hair is perfect? I don't really have that look in my mind's eye. Maybe it's because I don't know the look I want for this occasion. I sure don't want to look 18 again. But do I want to look 58? Well, I am 58 so that's where I am. But I don't dress like a 58-year-old. Today I am wearing jeans to work (a new summer Friday thing), a long form-fitting tunic  with a big belt slung on my hips. Big earrings, silver cuffs... Do I feel 58? Nope, I just feel like me. Age doesn't enter the equation... I've never felt an age.

The invitation said "NO JEANS!" and to wear "Sunday casual". Those constraints put a fly in the ointment for sure. I had a beautiful "evening" outfit all picked out that I can't wear now, and I can always throw a good jean look together at a moments notice. But "Sunday casual"? What the heck does that even mean? My Sunday casual in summer is jeans with a t-shirt, usually barefoot.

Well, I will have all day tomorrow to figure it out. If I don't post tomorrow, you will know that I will be in a tizzy with half of my closet on the bed and hanging around the room trying to put "the look" together. Whatever the outcome, I will try to get pictures. Gotta do that.

Stay tuned...

Friend for 45 years

Today is the birthday of my best friend. Happy birthday, Laurie! We've been friends for 45 years and have never even lived in the same city or close-by. In fact, when we "met" the first time, she lived in Connecticut and I lived in Georgia and I'd written her a letter. At that time we had two things in common:  we were both 13 and "Beatlemaniacs". I was madly in love with John Lennon and she was equally enamored with George Harrison. Oh yeah, we both had long hair.

A girl in my art class in the eighth grade told me she had a friend in Connecticut who loved the Beatles as much as I did and that I should drop her a line. I did and we've been writing ever since. And I don't mean writing a paragraph here and there; we wrote tomes to each other - sometimes my letters were 30 type-written pages! When we wrote physical letters before email existed, a month never passed without exchanging photos, brochures of where we'd been and words... lots of words in letters filled with every silly thing we'd been doing since we last wrote. Receiving one her letters was like sinking into a mini-novel for an hour or two and I'd hunker down on the couch and dig in. Had she finally dumped that creep she'd been dating? How was her mother doing? Was Denmark as cool as I'd thought it would be? What did she think about the photos I'd printed in my new darkroom?

Laurie is the only person I know who has lived with me through all my ups and downs in life; she has known me that long. She knew my parents and Allen and was cheering for me when I had my son. She was there during all the good times and hard times - and was always offering a kind word and hug - even though she was miles away. For meeting the way we did, we have so much in common and our lives followed very similar paths in so many ways.

We've only been together maybe six times during the 45 years we've been friends. And every time we meet, it's like we just saw each other yesterday. We "fit" for some reason and I sometimes wonder how it would have been if we'd lived nearer each other. I don't know how it could have been much better though. Every time in my life when I needed to get something out of my system, share a joy or complain about something, I would sit down and write to Laurie. And it always helped. She would send feedback quickly on certain things and ponder longer on other non-emergency situations. But she was always there.

In my life, she has been the one who was always there.

So happy birthday dear Laurie - and thank you for being my touchstone and best friend for all these years. I love you very much!

Laurie and me in 2007, the last time she visited