Now What

My dear and beautiful friend Maurine, who I've been friends with for 18 years, had a big birthday last month and the tribe held a birthday bash for her in California. I wasn't able to go so, to participate in spirit, Maurine sent me a blank scrapbook page to decorate of my own devising and return to her, as all the attendees had done.

Well what a project, let me tell you! I thought I knew exactly where my box of photos was, but after a hunt in the garage-- and the attic and a couple of closets-- I was stumped. Aaron finally found a large Tupperware bin of photos (In the garage! Where I'd already looked!) that he hauled out for me and I spent the better part of a day sorting through them.

First I sorted them into large categories "Family", "Foreign Travel", "River Trips", then into tighter categories. But what was really fun was throwing a bunch of pictures out. A whole wastebasket full of people I don't know anymore, people I don't like anymore, landscapes I didn't recognize.

And of course many, many pictures of Maurine, Jon, Lori, Rosemary, Carol, Susan and I. All of us (except Jon)wearing wedding dresses at a Palm Springs hotel, sequins and lime green prom gowns on a river trip, clown noses and wigs at a theatrical performance. We all look so young and yet somehow Maurine hasn't aged still, no wrinkles, all smiles.

I thought I would enjoy being reminded of people I hadn't thought of in a while, but what was most enjoyable was seeing who had endured, what I could still connect to. I have one photo album that has black-and-white pictures of my grandparents and parents through the years and then my brother and I. Switch to color in my early childhood. It made me really happy to think of adding my own kid to the album, an enduring thread.

Oh, and throughout the bin I found some great pictures of Maurine. One in particular that has to go in the scrapbook is of her from the back, leaning over into a raft in an unattractive orange swimsuit, with a big smear of mud on her rear end. Because as Oscar Wilde noted "good friends stab you in the front."