photographs framed in reeds

So, my sisters and my mom are going through our photo albums for pictures to scan onto the computer. My second scrapbook (the one they handed to me) is very short; come high school I had very few photos taken.

I did, however, have quite a few pictures of me and our fake sister the day after Homecoming, when our hair was still done and in our lovely dresses. I love that dress; it's the only formal I've ever owned and I got it for less than $40[1]. After staring at the photos of us for a while, I went downstairs and decided to try it on once more.

(It still fits.)

As I stared at myself in the mirror, I felt very wistful. I thought about the times I've worn that dress (one high school Homecoming, one college Homecoming), the time I planned to wear it and ended up in the hospital all weekend instead, and the times I could hope to wear it. I don't know if I'll ever have the chance to wear it again, which makes me sad and reveals my lack of faith in dating.

But then I started really looking, and my thoughts changed direction. In all those pictures my hair was wonderfully coiffed -- curled or straight, it was long and gorgeous. Today, it's short and spiky (I woke up with incredible bedhead and never bothered to fix it because I stay at home all day anyway) and while it's soft it's not ... pretty. It'll be years before I can count my hair one of my beauties again. So it doesn't matter if I don't get to wear my beloved dress for years and years, because I won't look right. It's the kind of dress a princess wears, not a punk.

Oh well. At least I'm alive and healthy, right?

"Pontchartrain" ~ Vienna Teng

[1]Let me tell you, after going wedding dress shopping with my sister, where the cheapest dress is just under $500, I feel even luckier to have made that purchase.