Today I spent the day in the South Bay with my dear friend Deedee and her family. We walked around the beautiful Hakone Gardens, and learned that parts of Memoirs of a Geisha were shot there. We had ice cream and then went back to her house where we both disappeared down a time warp while Nick made dinner and the girls played.
Deedee is organizing her photos, and because we've known each other since I moved here in '89, and were roommates until she got married in '94, I am in a lot of the photos. Such hairstyles we went through - long, short, straight, curly, red - and the things we wore! Remember the blazer/t-shirt/wide belt/shorts/tights combo circa '92? Or the denim overalls with leotard underneath? Classy!
It was a total trip, better than going through my own photos, because I hadn't seen most of these before.
I came home and took a look through my albums, to see my take on that time, and I found my very favorite picture of Deedee. There were other shots from this night in her photos, and we figured out that it was her 25th birthday party. Someone had given her that plastic necklace, and she's laughing so hard that the smiley faces are taking flight.
These were our twenties. We were figuring out life, wondering about the future, which was wide open and alternately thrilling and terrifying. There were broken hearts, empty checking accounts, rock-solid friendships, dizzying romances, a lot of parties, tears, and kissing. And there were nights like this, when the joy we felt threatened to lift us off the ground.
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