I think when you know someone almost your entire life, often one “look” of that person stays in your head. Whenever Lynne and I are going through photos of us over the years, I’ll say, “That’s my favorite photo of you!” That photo seems to be ever-changing; however, almost always, her hair will be in braids.
This is a photo from her collection, not mine. (And her version is better, because this is a picture of a picture, not a scan.) She’s sitting on the steps outside the doors leading from her parents’ living room to their back yard, and the dog is Ezra. The photo was taken the end of junior year/summer/beginning of senior year of high school. And she looks like such a hippie.
These days I hear people say “hippie” like it’s a dirty word. And maybe we were naive and idealistic and unrealistic. And yes, possibly high. But there is a soft sweetness to the girl in this photo, and this is who I see when I think “Lynne.”
We grow up. Hopefully we grow wiser and better. But we know there’s a core person within who’s still seven and seventeen and twenty-seven, etc. One beautiful thing about the friends we keep over the decades is that someone may always honor the forever-young person within us.