Seeing My Young Reflection

I am reading Floating in My Mother's Palm by Ursula Hegi and came across this passage which seems very appropriate in light of the upcoming reunion. She is writing about a group of old ladies in Germany, but the sentiment applies to any friends who were young together.

"Though they had wrinkles and gray hair, these women didn't think of themselves as old; it was an unspoken fact that each of them carried within, a fact that didn't need to be confirmed because there was always someone who could remember them as girls and recall a half-forgotten detail, someone who--beneath the fine web of lines--still saw the child's face.

They did this for each other, the old women, pulling out the albums of class picnics, of trips to Kaiserswerth and Schloss Burg, pointing to their younger images in fading photographs and whispering to each other: "Remember?" And they continued to do so until they were in their eighties or nineties because, as long as there was someone who had known them as girls, someone who could recollect the quick movements of their limbs, the graceful turn of their smooth necks--they could gaze into their mirrors and see their young reflections."

I spent some time today at Kinkos scanning photos from old albums and I look forward to sharing these electronic images of our own class picnics and parties with my childhood friends. Perhaps we, too, will see each other as perpetually youthful.


This photo was from a slumber party at my house in July 62. That's me on the bottom left, then Emily, Nancy, Wilma, Phyllis, Mary Lynn, and Pama--in our nightgowns.


I leave for Tennessee first thing tomorrow morning and will be taking my laptop so I can continue to BLOG while I am there.