back story.

Tom Petty's missing the point after all.  sometimes, the waiting is the sweetest part.  September will come.  it's coming soon enough. now is good just for itself. A few weeks back we passed the anniversary of the day. The anniversary of the week-end we set the time machine back to 1969. Of celebrating friends I had not seen in twenty years or longer. A time that reconnected me to beautiful friends I have missed. A time of building a float. Eating fried fish on Friday nights. Looking through yearbooks and faded photo albums.

Time spent in the security of people I never have to tell my back story to.

I have been lucky in my life to build my social circle and make new friends that I will have from here on out.  I want to be in one of those large groups of girlfriends with the red hats or purple blouses or green polyester slacks or whatever the current rage is.  I love my new friends I have made in the past twenty years.  They are enriching me and teaching me and there is a place for everyone, here with me forever and ever.

But there is something so different about the friends you made in the high school years that will give you an underpinning of familiarity forever.  There's an odd safety net there because you knew them eons ago at such a pivotal point in your life. Yet the mark of those relationships is indelible.  It makes no difference the amount of time that has passed since you last saw them.  Weeks? Months? Decades? It simply won't matter.

It won't matter because they knew you when you were somewhere between six and seventeen.  They knew you in your innocence.  They knew your pure self.  The self that was developing before you knew you were being judged.

They knew you before the back story.

Before any of life's crap changed you for the better or for the worse.  Before you had to begin to build walls to protect yourself.  Before you started on the journey of tearing down the walls you built to protect yourself.

Before marriages and divorces, before kids and political parties.  Before much anticipated births and untimely deaths.  Before financial yo-yoing and weight gains.  Before creaky knees and blood pressure meds.  Before you were pretentious or just plain worn out.

I always love being in their presence.  I am wholly me.  I don't have to explain my sense of humor, they get me.  I kinda boss people around (I know, right! you're tilting your head with a curious look because that just doesn't sound like me). I scream with delight.  Loudly.  I say my peace and give my opinion. I know they won't run away.  They have already accepted who I am... so many lifetimes ago.

It makes me remember who I was.  Who I still am.  Underneath it all.

I was a girl who hugged and held hands and laughed hard and ditched class.  I could scream with excitement and run headlong down the hall to greet friends.  Friends I hadn't seen since 2nd period English Lit.

I hung out with my girlfriends every day and every weekend.  We actually had time for each other.  Just absolute fun and bonding and hair braiding and giggling and drama.  There was clothes swapping and sleepovers and falling asleep with cheese curls in your mouth, (that never happened to you?).

I was a bit wild. and a dancer.  I had bone straight, dish water blonde hair that now looks red in all of the fading pictures.  I had my own wonky style that went terribly terribly wrong sometimes.   I was in awe of the drama department and the mysterious laid back cool guy in the quad.  I ate donuts for lunch and skinny dipped with friends.  Not in that order...

Or maybe it was.

Anything was possible then.  The road was ahead.  The viewpoint was yet to be established and optimism filled the day.  What could go wrong?  We were young and there was a party Friday night.

I absolutely love every minute of these memory lane get togethers, where the words are just like honey~  thick, sweet, golden, natural, and if you run them under warm water, they decrystallize and start flowing. Reminiscing about a bunch of adolescents hanging around - holding hands, squealing at stupid things and doing our very best to figure out what class we had together.

I always mean to take more pictures, but sometimes it's better to simply live a moment than to record it.

Can someone queue the music here? I think I hear angels singing. 


It is our time to remember who we were.

Who we are.  Underneath.  Before the back story.

I feel like we will be together forever and that makes me very smiley.

I'm wishing you the same happiness.

just sayin'..