10 Years
When I was in college, before the dawn of the digital camera or the camera phone or the iPod camera phone or anything else that they come up with, I was still the girl who was always taking a million photographs. (Even then I was big on self portraits.)
It’s amazing to me, looking back through them all now, that those captured images, as delicate and fragile as they were waiting there on that roll of film, made it out of the camera without being lost or destroyed or exposed. We weren’t always of sound mind, and even though I have the pictures to prove it, I don’t necessarily remember always carting a camera with me or asking people to stop so I could take their picture.
My roommate Kim and I loved our scrapbooks and it was always a fun day when I would get prints back from the photo lab Uptown and could get to work sticking them in my books. Our scrapbooks were so mythical, in fact, that when Kim got married in 2003 and I knew my former roommate Bridget was going to be there (a girl I hadn’t seen since graduation day 1998), I packed my junior/senior year book in my suitcase for the trip to Cleveland.
When I pulled it out of my bag Bridget bounded over to me and squealed and we sat on the bed and poured over it. She took it back to Chicago with her to show her then boyfriend and I finally, finally got it back yesterday.
Last night I flipped through it page by page and memories and names and people and places hit me in a rush.
I hardly recognize myself in some of the pictures, like this one, even though in some ways I look older then than I do now.
This photo was taken at my boyfriend’s fraternity formal and my eyes are glassy from too much champagne and my smile is wide from new love (and too many glasses of champagne). We’d only been dating a few weeks here, but like most college relationships that blossom in close quarters, we were already fully in it. We had a class together that met three times a week and he would make the short walk from his fraternity house to my off-campus apartment almost nightly. We set my roommate Dana up with one of his brothers for the formal and the four of us drove down to Cincinnati together. I realize now how annoying that must have been for the other hotel guests, an avalanche of college students playing dress up in cocktail attire and sport jackets, whose only real mission was to get as drunk as possible amid different scenery. But we thought we were grown up in our dresses and ties, making toasts with champagne flutes that were engraved with the fraternity’s letters and the year.
We thought we were special when we were really just same.
I thought my relationship with him was special, it was to me, but looking back now it was just that college romance that everyone has, if they’re lucky. We fought and yelled and made up and held hands on the slantwalk. He took me for granted and I broke up with him via telephone during summer break so that I could make out with a football player.
The road from 20 to 30 has been long, and chronicled, but when I look at this photo it seems like I somehow blinked from there to here. From her to me. Like if I wasn’t more careful, I might have missed it.
Denial
Sarah just said I’m experiencing “Fat Denial Happiness,” because I refuse to get on the scale and I’m in a good mood about it.
To which I replied, Darn Skippy.
Particular
When I was home for Christmas, my grandmother asked me when I was going to hurry up and have a baby and name it after her. I laughed and told her I was trying, but that I hadn’t found anyone yet.
“You’re just too particular,” she said. “You and your cousin. Stop being so picky.” I laughed and told her that I didn’t think being particular was my problem – it was more that I just couldn’t find anyone who acted right. (Ackrite, y’all.)
About a month later, when I was in Texas, I recounted this story to my father and he said, “Next time you talk to Jo tell her you’re not being too particular – you’re just trying to find someone your dad won’t have to kill.”
Anniversary
An e-mail from my mother:
It was 41 years ago I married your father. I was remembering the day and all that happened. Early that morning Grandma Jean got up early and took a long walk with my bridesmaid June. I can see them red faced coming in the door at Mom & Dads. It was cold that morning! There was much excitement. Thinking back Me-Me handled it all very well. She cooked and cleaned the whole week before and I never heard her complain about anything. Jo Ellen helped her decorate the house. They were all worried about the Doctor and his Wife fitting in with the farmers and the small unassuming wedding. It all went well, it was a lovely day, everyone was so happy. Janie cried during the whole ceremony, the front of her green dress was covered with water marks! Your Daddy was so handsome, he took my breath away. The hallway at 329 South St. was filled with gifts!! Bubby teased me all day, I can still see his “wink” when he saw me come down the aisle.
And I can still feel Pa-Pa’s big hand on my arm and hand as he walked me down. He patted my hand and smiled at me as if to say “It’s okay.” I miss so many people.
” For you have a new life. It was not passed on to you from your parents, for the life they gave you will fade away. this one will last forever, for it comes from Christ, God’s ever-lasting Message to men.” 1 Peter 1:23 TLB
Go Team
I am not that cool girl who sits at the bar with the guys cheering on the Falcons or the Oilers or whomever. I understand the basics of most games, but I have no idea what foul the ref is about to call or what that crazy arm move means.
I like going to games, any type of game, but it’s always more about the experience (the beer, the food, the community, the shared experience of cheering for something honest and real) than it is about the action on the court or the field or the ice.
That said, every March when the madness fever starts to spread, I catch it. I haven’t watched five seconds, let alone five minutes, of any NCAA basketball game this season, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to play.
I’m participating in two pools, one of them for money, and I’ve already check Yahoo! Sports (shout-out to Mark) a half dozen times. And I almost had a stroke when I saw the Boston College game was in its second overtime.
So yeah, I don’t know who won the 1961 World Series or why Joe Namath was a great quarterback, but I have the madness just the same. Go team.
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Compassion
