In the process of going through boxes of old photos from the attic, I came across my first scrapbook from 1974.( Let me save you from doing the math...I was 14 years old.) The pages were yellow and brittle and literally falling out of the book. I don't believe this scrapbook has been looked at for at least a couple decades.
The pages were filled with the usual teenage stuff: flyers from dances, newspaper clippings of my boyfriends' baseball games, school photos, a pressed flower and leaf, my first paycheck ($2.65 an hour as a banquet hall waitress), and black and white photos of my friends. It took me a moment to remember that I took those photos and developed them in a high school photography class darkroom.
In a rare moment (even now) in which I handed off my camera and am actually in a photo, there is the one of Sheila, myself, and Mary. The Doberman Gang, is what we were called. Best of friends. The photo was taken in eighth grade; I know this because by high school the next year, Mary had drifted away from us and hung out with other friends. I was no doubt squinting at the camera, glasses off and in my pocket. And even though the photo is black and white, I remember my blazer was hunter green corduroy.
I wish I could say we were all still friends.
Mary drifted off with other friends in high school.
Sheila and I remained friends for a long time afterwards. We weren't best friends in high school anymore but we knew we could always count on each other to celebrate the good times and to get through the really bad times. We stayed friends through college, her in L.A. and me still in the Bay Area. And even after when she went off to New York and I was married with a baby, living in the Central Valley. She was there for me as my first marriage fell apart.
And then, sometime in 1993 or so, we stopped writing to each other, stopped calling. Stopped trying to maintain the friendship.
I think about her from time to time. Wonder how her life is going. Well, actually, I don't need to wonder too much. I hear about her from time to time. Her parents and mine are friends. They attended my daughter's wedding. And I know Sheila has a blog. And I'm guessing she's on Facebook, too. But we're not friends.
