The biggest lesson I�ve learned...

The biggest lesson I�ve learned this year is that no one is really your friend, or truly loves you until they�ve seen every dark shadow inside you, and stayed.

True friends are always there for you.

True friends are always there for you. Fake friends only appear when they need something from you. Time passes and you begin to see people for who they really are and not who they pretend to be. Respect people who find time for you in their busy schedule. But love people who never look at their schedule when you need them. Life is much too short to waste time on people who don�t really care

That�s when I realized what a true friend was.

That�s when I realized what a true friend was. Someone who would always love you - the imperfect you, the confused you, the wrong you - because that is what people are supposed to do.

My favourite kind of friendship

My favourite kind of friendship is one where there�s a mutual understanding of the fact that we both have our own lives so we won�t be able to talk or hang out all the time but when we do talk or hang out it�s like picking up right where we left off.

If we don't vibe, we don't vibe.

I don't like forced conversations, forced friendships, forced interactions, I simply do not force things. If we don't vibe, we don't vibe.

Real friends

As we go through life, we start to understand that it's not important to have a lot of friends. What truly matters is that we have real friends.

Beauty Parlor Night

In my twenties, when I was young and carefree, I rented a house with four other women.  We all worked, dated, and fret about the number of pizza slices we ate in front of the blinking black and white TV on Friday nights.  We were obsessed with clothes, the number on the scale, and finding Mr. Right.  Maybe not so carefree...

Our lone bathroom quickly became overflowing with lotions and potions, hair "painting" kits, pink shaving foams, and bottles of nail polish.  Although we each had our own personal needs, we gradually came to see how much fun it could be to unite and conquer our challenges collectively. Thus, Beauty Parlor Night was born.

We had lots of giggles and laughs running in and out of each others' rooms trying on lipsticks and giving each other manicures.  We shared dating horror stories as well as gave advice to the poor roommate who happened to be lovelorn that week.  We spent a lot of time cross-legged on each others' beds with Mint Julep Mask on our faces and towels wrapped around our heads.

For me, Beauty Parlor Night is still sacrosanct even though my routine has become much simpler. - I'm less concerned with trying new makeup colors and much more passionate about good skincare and smooth and lovely feet.  And it's imperative that my beauty regime eases me into a good nights sleep which is by far the best beauty aid of all for someone my age.

Like penguins tossing themselves to the sea, my roommates and I disbanded and plunged one-by-one into marriages.  I miss the young women I lived and "played" with long ago and was thrilled to chat with one recently.  "What are you doing at home tonight?", she asked.  "I just stepped out of a lavender honey bath. You"?  "I stole my daughter's blue nail polish and it's drying on my toes", she replied.


Note:  Next post up, "What I Did For Love Infatuation".  Soon, I hope.

Spring Charms

I used to think my modest house took on its beauty only by candlelight.  But that was before I had a new front door installed with a half-moon transom built into the top.  Every morning this past week, as I descended the stairs, I noticed a brief pastoral scene framed in that window, as pretty as if it had been stolen from a colorful illustrated bible.  The window is also responsible for shedding a tender shaft of light on my living room floor that greets me each day as I pad across it to reach my coffee cup.

I've lived in my home almost twenty years now, so it is too steeped in memories to be seen in a detached way.  But I do take it for granted sometimes.  And since I've only just begun to appreciate spring as the lovely season it is, I always thought my house made its grand entrance on Christmas Eve when my tree shines bright along with the white votives I scatter across the bookshelves.  Not anymore...

As well as the new light in the morning, I realize I am truly indebted to the frieze of trees that shelter the front of my house and help keep things quiet around here.  Those elms are not yet in leaf but a coppery aura tell me that they will be green soon.  I learned about that from an old farmer once.  The birches are still blurred with a hazy pistachio-green foliage along with a lot of unnamed plants and bushes.  I don't have a green thumb but I have admire what gardeners choose to plant for maximum spring color.

Something as simple as a newly installed window has caught me off guard and made me want to head outdoors for walks.  But not for exercise - I want to scavenge for presents for the house. I clipped a communal bush for forsythia branches but now they have passed.  Next will be my mother's lilac which I will pilfer for both us.

There's always one moment in the house, when I sense that summer has arrived.  Sometimes it's the heat I feel from the second floor when I open the front door from work -or the unmistakable earth smell from the open bedroom windows.  But I've always ignored spring's visit - it's just been too painful.  Lucky for me, a friend has been showering me with love and holding my hand for the last few springs.  This year, with my new "view" from a simple built-in window that was really just an afterthought, I may be able to manage on my own.  Every season has its gifts.

The Three Graces

Recently, I received a text from my first childhood friend which accompanied the picture above.  "I saw this at the Smithsonian today and thought of us", was all she wrote.  The mystical soft green painting of three women strolling at dusk is by Thomas Wilmer Dewing who was known for painting ethereal images of women.  Given the friendship between Paula, my sister, and I, it is no surprise that my friend was drawn to the painting.  I too, have a fondness for threes.

Our enduring friendship is probably why I also love the Three Graces - the classical goddesses that have inspired artists for centuries.  Talk about sisterhood - always linked, always entwined - they represent the female ideals of Grace, Charm, and Beauty.  And they represent something else too  - solidarity...something I didn't see too much of in my years in the corporate world.

For me, the Three Graces' message isn't just of femininity although my little cameo of their likeness reminds me so.  I believe the Graces, who are daughters of Zeus and therefore, sisters, also speak for friendship.  The deep abiding, "I've got your back" kind that comes around just a few times in life.  I still have it with my childhood friend, my sister, and a small handful of others.  These are the pals that keep you company on the phone late at night when you're in the hospital.  They remember not just your birthday but the secret anniversaries of your heart too.  They never forget the slights that hurt and the perpetrators who caused them - they remember all the slings and arrows, sometimes long after you've forgotten them yourself.  Like when you mistakenly got put in the corner at 3rd grade recess.  They pick you up when your car breaks down with curlers in their hair and just a half hour before their Big Date.  They would never leave you stranded.  No. Matter. What.

To say that we three, Paula, my sister, and I spent a lot of time together is a gross understatement - our days were braided like the plaits in our hair.  Today, I can still name their every doll and every boyfriend.  And although decades separate us from those childhood days, whenever I happen to run across a variation of the Three Graces, I think of us too.

~

Do "Graces" grace your life?

And other "Graces":

The three of us (I'm on left).

(My cameo)

The Fourth of July .... and Carol

Summer brings many joys like ice cream and the Fourth of July.  This year more than ever, it seems that American women dressed very patriotically. The political and social reasons can be explored at more intellectual blogs than this one (although it could just be J. Crew) - I only know I was charmed by the stars and stripes and the red, white and blue in shorts, tops, and espadrilles.  And most of it was worn tastefully with touches of whimsy.

My pretty and chic friend Carol, a Deborah Kerr lookalike, reminds me of our model above.  Today she had on an attractive short-sleeved sweater, thickly striped in red and white that didn't hide the fact that it was our nation's birth (it also didn't hide her tiny waist).  I'm always interested to see what Carol is wearing because of all my friends, Carol's taste in clothing most closely aligns with mine.  

I love my sweet and soft-spoken friend very much.  She appears delicate but is strong...and I am in awe of her.  She recently obtained her college degree after eight grueling years of part-time school while holding down a full-time job.  She raised a son alone.  And she is a breast cancer survivor.  She is also the friend that does my taxes, makes me go to yoga class on Saturday morning when I'ld rather stay in bed, and visits any family members who happen to be in the hospital.  And two days ago, she told me she is moving.  To Florida.

Carol is leaving New England for a great new job and to be close to her now-grown son.  I understand (really, I do!) and I am happy for her because she is finally getting that fresh start she has been ripe for since losing her job.  But behind my smile, I am crying.  I will miss her terribly.  Beside the Fourth of July, Carol has long graced my Christmas tree, shown up for coffee and dessert every Easter, attended my daughter's graduations and wedding.  And it is Carol to whom I turn when I need a co-pilot to drive to the mall with to return something on a weeknight, need a friend to have a bite to eat with...or need a friend to just chat with about lipstick and eyebrow pencils.  She is a wonderful, wonderful caring pal.

So just for tonight, I beg you not to tell me the world is small...and that there is email, texting, and Skype. Pray don't say I will have a warm place to vacation in winter and please have a care and don't remind me that she will come home from time to time.  Saturday yoga won't be the same and neither will Christmas Eve around the tree or Easter Sunday for that matter.

And somehow, I just know that next Fourth of July will have a little less sis-boom-bah too.

~

(Carol...all my love and good wishes go with you dear friend!)

Lost Islands

Some weeks have personalities of their own.  And so do some weekends.  Last Friday night while driving home from dinner with my daughter, I received a call on my bluetooth.  When I said hello the policeman on the other end asked me to identify myself.  They found my number on the cell phone of a friend who was unresponsive in an ambulance and I was the last person he had called.

Fast forward to Monday where I sat across from my friend as spring twilight flooded my upstairs sitting room with the grainy other-worldly light that comes just before dark - both of us a bit shell-shocked and misty-eyed.  You just never know.  Fortunately, he is ok but for 24 hours, no one was quite sure. Apparently, a seizure will do that to a person.

As we waited for our dinner to finish cooking in the oven, the conversation drifted to other things and I began telling him about an article I recently read regarding the real-life island that J.M. Barrie visited while writing Peter Pan.   I wondered if the island had been used as the setting for the lost boys' sanctuary, as was so magically depicted in the enduring tale.  Barrie visited the place over and over and once said that the call of the island can only be heard by those for whom it was meant...

I felt compelled to stay by my friend's hospital bed all weekend.  I also felt that if I could speak to him up close, somehow I could make him wake up because in my heart, I believed he was not having a stroke but perhaps a seizure.  When they finally allowed me to approach, I leaned in and told him I was there and that everything was going to be ok.  My words did the trick because he immediately turned his face towards mine and with his eyes still closed, smiled widely.  I heard one of the doctor's murmur, "That was a pretty good response".

Our weekend was a lost one although blessedly, one with a happy ending.  And Barrie's observation has stayed with me all this week long ... sometimes words too, can really only be heard by those for whom they are meant.

Two Mothers

I'm always a little sad when Mother's Day ends.  I have enough self-knowledge to know it's the passage of time that gently tugs at my heart.  Quickly go the years...

These two ladies were neighbors for almost thirty years.  The photo was taken last summer at my daughter's wedding.  The woman on the right is my mother, Joan.  Next to her is my second mother, Rosemary, who receives a Mother's Day card from me each year.

Rosemary is my first best friend's mother.  As girls, Paula and I used to love when our mothers gathered to chat in the heated summer darkness at the end of our driveway.  We pretended to play but we were really hanging onto their every word.  It was during one of these eavesdropping sessions that I discovered my mother was harboring a secret worry that my eyebrows might be taking on the shape of my Scottish grandfather's (believe me, you don't want the flying brows of a scotsman).  I also got advance notices of upcoming vacations and other plans that were still in closed family discussions.  One night the mothers collectively concluded that it was ok for us to begin shaving our legs, long-wished for by us and long-denied by them.  Lots of rites-of-passages occurred in tandem because they were dissected and decided during motherly pow-wows that took place in the still summer air, accompanied only by the waving buzz of cicadas.

We knew it was time for bed when our mothers began slapping at their legs.  The mosquitoes always won out and off to bed we'ld go, a little disappointed there wasn't going to be more said...and more to hear.

Seventeen Summer

No matter what age I was, all my summers were Seventeen Summers.  They were filled with the glories depicted in what I consider Seventeen Magazine's golden years (1960's - 1970's).  Neither cell phones nor iTunes were part of my Seventeen Summers.  We had small transistor radios to listen to the Top 40 but with the sound kept to a respectable neighborly level.  There was no such thing as a designer handbag with a dangling fur-ball charm or must-have designer sneakers.  If we wore sneakers, they were a simple pair of Ked's fetched out of a bin at a sneaker barn near Boston for less than five dollars.  Handbags were small and ladylike and gifted to us by grandmothers to be used and loved for years.

The playing field was level because no one in my hometown could afford designer clothing and that's if we even knew what designer clothing was.  If we didn't sew our own summer clothes and many of us did, we bought them in the same small clothing shops on Main Street or at Filene's, Jordan Marsh or Sears, just like everybody else.  Those stores are where we would find all the pretty clothes we saw in Seventeen.  The simply daisy-printed shift, the cute little short set, or the nautical skirt - all accessible straight from the page.  There were no $7000 dresses in Seventeen Magazine.

And yet, somehow we all looked adorable.  Maybe it was the inexpensive cosmetics, like Yardley's Pot-o-Gloss or the grass-green bottles of Herbal Essence shampoo, all as close as a stroll to the local Rexall.  We didn't need to wander around a big box store to get our beauty stuff.  If Rexall didn't have, we didn't need it.  Maybe it was because we followed Seventeen's monthly beauty column that told us we could make ourselves lovely in the comfort of our very own teenaged bedrooms that we decorated ourselves.  There were no nail salons for mani/pedi's on each and every corner.  Or waxing and threading spas.  We plucked.  Using slanted steel Tweezerman's - the same kind Grandmother used - while peering into the True-To-Light magnifying mirrors we got for Christmas.  Our Saturdays were not devoted to facials, tanning, and massages. Seventeen days were meant for meaningful pursuits.

Such as reading a big fat book lying on a blanket in the backyard.  Or seeing who could find the best rock for our parents to set the picnic table with to keep the paper plates and napkins from blowing down the street on the 4th of July.  Sometimes we were told to corral the little kids at the barbeque and play games with them so the adults could talk.  It was expected that we were participating members of a different kind of gang - The Family.  Maybe we babysat neighborhood children for 50 cents an hour.  Some of us taught crafts at the Recreation Department's day camp where we would instruct elementary children in lanyard making or gum wrapper chains.  Some of us were lifeguards at the town's wading pools or we manned the concession stand at the beach. Others supervised at Vacation Bible School or volunteered at the hospital as Candy Stripers. Everyone walked everywhere or rode bikes.  Mother's gardening time was never disturbed for just a ride because it was perfectly safe and healthy to walk a couple of miles a day if we had to get somewhere.  No one had a car of their own but almost everyone had a friend to walk and chat with once they met up at the corner.  Arrangements for meet-ups were organized by using the one family telephone that hung on the kitchen wall with an extended chord.  That is, if somebody else wasn't yapping on it first.

If we were older, our Seventeen Summer may have included tennis court dances and dates to the local hot-dog stand at the edge of town.  We went to the drive-in in groups or we cozied up at beach bonfires and concerts.  If we had saved money from our varied jobs, there may have been a late summer bus ride with a chum to the city for back-to-school togs and school supplies. Whatever we bought, I guarantee it was culled from Seventeen.

Despite all this activity, there was still time to noodle through Wuthering Heights or to get an early start on required summer reading lists.  Long hours of lollygagging prepared us for the upcoming rigors of high school and we better be ready for it.  We kept diaries, sent postcards, played cards, ...vegetated...talked.  And we attracted boys with lively conversation and sandwiches like Boy Trap #51.  No twerking involved.

There wasn't much drama in a Seventeen Summer.  Life was simple and we knew our place. Seventeen Magazine just assumed we wanted to volunteer, help out, expand our minds all the while having fun without the narcissism that plagues so many young people today.  We wanted to look good but we didn't obsess about it.  We used our natural beauty and enhanced it with a few well-chosen affordable cosmetics.  And then we forgot about it.  Which made room for rewarding connections, stewardship, laughter...

...and more than a few dreams.

Better Days Ahead

Many years ago, a friend whose life I thought perfect, let me read a card her husband had given her.  Inside was a simple handwritten line:  "Better days ahead".  As I was to learn, my friend's marriage had been in desperate trouble for a long time and with a small child to raise, she and her husband were trying marriage counseling to see if things could be put to right.  The three straightforward words sounded more like a promise to me than a wish and after I heard the story of their unraveling marriage, I thought it a truly hopeful sign, perfectly penned.

Winter has always been a favorite season, but this time around it has come with a flurry of sad things:  a friend's father died suddenly, loved ones have been plagued with difficult challenges and someone I care about is having a big surgery.  Now, a person on the periphery of my work world has taken his own life - a young father.  It seems as though the universe simply held its breath until after the holidays and then let it rip.  It has been very dark, too...the darkest of January's.  And snowless.

There have been recent nights when I went to bed feeling nothing but aching compassion and love for everyone I know.  Along with the prayers on my lips, I dared to send hope to that secret place of magical thinking where pain eases and tragic spells are broken with good deeds.  But instead of doing things for strangers and loved ones and using it as a fervent bargaining tool, I discovered that no matter what the outcomes, it always makes sense to be kind.  Afterall, as said best by the author, mystic, and irascible fellow human being known as Mark Twain, "...everyone we meet is carrying a heavy burden".

Snow is still not on the forecast and the darkness is too low for even one starry glint from above. But as I continue to support the troubled people in my realm, I do believe there are better days ahead.  We need only wait.  With loving kindness for each other.

A Kindred Visit

I recently drove six hours to visit my dearest friend for four days.  It was way too short.  We began anew at the spot we left off - where the heartsong plays.  Comforting, kindly, funny - that is what this friendship is.

A magazine brought us together - Victoria.  Our love of home and family found us both on a Victoria-related site, where we "met".  Soon I realized by reading her posts, that we had very much in common.  I reached out to her on the day I received a mean-spirited letter from my former mother-in-law who chose to contact me suddenly after nearly twenty years.  I sent a personal email and lucky for me, my friend, who just happened to be at her office on a Saturday morning to retrieve eyeglasses, logged onto her work computer and read it right away.  She called and together we determined that the unwelcome letter needed to be destroyed.  But it was the balm of her solace and comfort that broke the spell that threatened to ruin my weekend.  And thus began our daily emails and soon-to-be regular visits.

Our first meeting took place at Penn Station in New York City on the day we had lunch with Victoria's founding editor.  I recognized my friend immediately and while we trawled the subway that day, sitting shoulder to shoulder, I felt I had come home to something.  We could not stop talking, sharing, nodding in understanding, and as she sat with me later, waiting for my train home, my mind raced ahead to other potential visits.  I asked her to sign my new journal before we hugged goodbye.

So two weeks ago, I trekked to her neck of the woods again on a beautiful fall day filled with light and color.  I was anxious to see the improvements she made on her home, hear her sing in her church's choir, and meet another friend of hers.  We also did a little bit of shopping which was great fun.  And although it was only to the local mall, I imagined we two with baskets on our arms strolling a charming outdoor Christmas market, just like I saw in Victoria magazine years ago.

Time together always include fashion talks and so topics like new winter coats, ways to make leggings chic, and finding good cashmere were all discussed at length.  I also received a recommendation for an amazing shampoo that I would never have found on my own.  We cooked together and banged around her house reading vintage Seventeen magazines and watching old movies like sisters.  Tea figured prominently.  And hopes for our children...our joys...our fears.  A few fears.

This kindred visit gave me a present - a soul reboot.  As I made my way home alone, driving through the paved hollows of endless red and gold burnished hills, I couldn't even listen to the radio - my mind, so filled with new things and plans, craved room to expand.  I felt grateful to have someone in my life who cares equally about my past, my present, and my future. And in the long quiet miles, I came to see that a kindred friendship is a sheltering tree.

Heroines and Dressing Gowns

Also called a robe or a wrapper, the dressing gown is a special garment.  My mother always made certain we had warm bathrobes to wear in winter over our pajamas and nightgowns.  My grandmother taught me to drape my robe across the foot of my bed each night.  This shouldn't surprise given that every heroine in any film straight through the 1960's, enrobed herself first and foremost if there was any trouble after midnight, including burglaries and fires.  If my house were ablaze, I don't think I would waste a moment of time putting on a robe before jumping out the bedroom window but I still like to know my favorite wrapper is within reach of my hand anyway.  Just in case.

At home and out of the public eye, a society matron must have taken great pleasure in slipping into her dressing grown after a day of corsetry.  I know I enjoy putting on mine after a long day at the salt mines.  And this summer, I particularly love sweet cooling cotton robes with matching nighties.  I pulled out an old set after our long heat wave began and feel so much more ladylike than if I were padding around in just a skimpy nightgown or worn sweatpants.  Wearing a dressing gown also gives an extra layer of protection should someone come to the door unexpectedly as happened to me recently or if you are an overnight guest at a friend's house.  Somehow, it just seems polite to wear a wrapper - afterall, informality should not be an excuse to be a floozy in someone else's home and in my book, there is still something to be said for modesty.

But what of the feminine dressing gown?  Why has it disappeared from the lexicon of so many women's wardrobes?  I can only imagine it is because life as well as clothing has become so casual these days.  I've always loved lingerie mainly because it is the one remaining bastion in a woman's life where she can still exercise her love of lace, rustles, ribbons, and other purely female vestments that were once also worn on clothing's more formal, public side.  The dressing gown has an enduring intimate glamour.

Many years ago, a pal and I came across quite authentic-looking kimonos.  We were overcome by the vivid prints and silky tactile material.  I only wore mine a few times because the extra-wide sleeves threatened to ignite from my gas stove burners while preparing breakfast and so it hung prettily on the back of my bathroom door.  My friend wore hers to shreds as she traveled often with her pilot husband.  He eventually bought her a real Japanese kimono that was somehow too precious to wear.  But we marveled at it and wrapped ourselves in it by turns - it was just so lovely. Even today, many robes still exhibit an affinity towards exotic "Eastern" influences.

This summer while researching dressing gowns, I chanced upon a robe so dear that tears almost sprang to my eyes.  It fostered so many romantic notions about what a feminine and elegant woman would wear at home in the part of her life that is special and hidden.  It would be a splurge to be sure.  But night after night, my fingers flew to the website that housed this beautiful garment until I realized it had to be mine.  It was harebrained and frivolous but in the end, the cost didn't really break the bank too much and the joy of wearing my dressing gown has paid dividends into my metaphysical pleasure bank.  I love the way the fabric trails behind me brushing my ankles as I turn the corner into the kitchen for evening tea.  It elevates my ordinary even when it's laying in repose at the foot of my bed waiting serenely for the in-house heroine to give it shape.

(My dressing gown.)

Fashion and a Guest

One doesn't need a petite cottage in the backyard to host a guest.  Just a comfy bed and a little space for some personal things.  My friend Karen is here for her yearly visit and I am over the moon.

We began exactly where we left off in conversation, we are so in sync.  But this year we also started with a bang and drove to Newport in fog as thick as mashed potatoes to hear a lecture on, what else?  Fashion.  Caroline Reynolds Milbank, author of "Resort Fashion" gave a marvelous talk about leisure fashion.  It was way too brief and although I loved the photographs on the screen, Karen and I both agreed Milbank's love of clothes was infectious and was worth the price of admission.

Later, we eschewed dinner out because of rain gusts and resumed our spots on the couch with tea and toast.  Naturally, the conversation turned to children who have left or are leaving, dreams and hopes for them and ourselves, and of course, what else?  Fashion.

I shyly told Karen that I've been admiring the style of Tricia Nixon Cox, who just saw her son off in marriage.  I described a pretty mother-of-the-bride dress based on Mrs. Cox's.  Within minutes Karen had it sketched out for me and I'm in awe - it's exactly what I was envisioning.  Right there.  On paper.

Today, Karen shyly asked me if she could stay another day.  We're just having so much fun, plotting, planning, dreaming and talking.  About what else?  Fashion!

~

Credit where credit is due:  This is a painting by the lovely Janet Hill...Janet, I love your artwork and if you want me to take it down, I will!  (http://janethillstudio.com/blog)

When lilacs last in the door-yard bloom'd...

 

Those are Walt Whitman's words.  The poem seems to be an ode to spring but in his later years, Whitman admitted he was writing about the tragic death of Abraham Lincoln.  That April, the lilac purportedly bloomed earlier than normal which made the unspeakable loss of the president all the more sorrowful to Whitman. 

 

Lilacs seem to mingle with our very souls, their scent is so dazzling.  And since most of us encounter them first in childhood, we have enduring associations with these purple blossoms.  Our yard growing up did not host a lilac bush but my best friend across the street had some ancient ones.  I remember picking bunches and bunches of them and then watching as her mother placed them in crystal clear glass vases throughout the house.  We brought some to our teachers after burying our faces in the cold blooms on our walk to school.  But the fragrance of lilacs builds to a crescendo quickly and then suddenly...they are gone. 

 

Because the time of lilacs is fleeting in proportion to the potent emotion they garner, it makes sense that Whitman uses them as a metaphor for the unencumbered past.  He longs for the innocent time when lilacs seemed to bloom unceasingly, only to realize that as they return each season, he remembers loss and bereavement.

 

All this is not to say that lilacs depress me.  They do not.  I do wish they lasted longer - at least until the roses and peonies replace them in June.  Lilacs will always remind me of my best friend, her mother, my mother and grandmother.  My wonderful teachers.  Spring school assemblies outdoors.  Friendships.  Music.  The first picnic.  May baskets.  Mother's Day.  Proms.  Spring dresses.  And oh yes...love.  Always, always they remind me of love. 

 ~

 When lilacs last in the door-yard bloom'd,

And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night;

I mourn'd-and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.

O ever-returning spring! Trinity sure to me you bring;

Lilac blooming perennial, and drooping star in the wet,

And thought of him I love.

~Whitman