Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Amazing Printer

I bought a new printer last week and have been fooling around with its various functions. The thing continues to amaze me. I scanned this old photo into the computer and published it here. It's me as a senior in high school with my boyfriend, Don. We are about to leave for the senior prom. The picture was taken forty-four years ago.

I can remember that night pretty clearly. It's the same brain behind the same eyes, looking out from a very different body. I remember that red dress, bought especially for the occasion, along with the long white gloves. I spent much of the afternoon getting ready, sitting under the dryer with big rollers in my hair in order to achieve the bouffant style of the time. Don picked me up wearing a rented tuxedo and bearing a wrist corsage--an orchid. We went to the country club where the dance was held in his father's Plymouth and had a wonderful, magical time.

I am still in touch with Don. We struck up a long-distance relationship about fifteen years ago. We've visited each other a few times, flying across the country in order to do so. Our teen-age romance became a friendship based on a common history. We shared the experience of first love and that has bound us together despite our separate lives. Now we share news of the weather, the political situation, our daily routines. It's companionable, and in many ways extraordinary. It keeps us connected to the people we were then. Almost all of our lives have been lived apart from one another. All we have in common took place in less than a year. We never talk about that time, but it's the glue that keeps us together.

I don't know what else to think about that. It just feels important.
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