Rights of passage

Pretty homemade cupcakes. The colors were pink and green thus the little pink and green cut outs thrown every where which tempted Maya to put them in her mouth

Josh and Julia's living room with some of the guests. Many of Don'tae's family left before I could take a picture

Picture frame full of engagement and Maya pix from Julia

The Bride to be. 

Ms. Maya 

The bride-to-be wore a  flaming, blinking lip pin Kiss me! I'm the Bride on her skin tight dress. Just outside the window, the huge, pink Rose of Sharon bush was in full bloom. Inside various shades of pink gerber daisies, star gazer lilies and pink gladiolas were in vases.  The place looked very  festive and pretty for Naomi's wedding shower thrown by my daughter-in-law Julia. Alas it conflicted with too many schedules.  Dontae's mom, not feeling well after her recent surgery left early with her contingent. But all in all, it went well. One less rite checked off the master list: the last bridal shower of my children.

Later onto the the Northern suburbs for my 40th high school reunion on the  lewdly named Big Beaver Road (aka 16 mile, Quarton Road, Metropolitan Parkway, Walnut Lake Road or  Buno Road depending on which town you happen to be in..I was on the Big Beaver section, the name always cracked me up although I suppose it could have been   named quite innocently but I choose to think the worst).

What did I expect? A room full of people I didn't recognize even with their nametags with a picture of them back in high school, ear splitting music which wasn't even from the right time period, bad food, one drink only unless you wanted to shell out $8/ drink ? There were almost a 1000 in my class and most of the people attending were from the east side of town, which I knew in advance. But there were a very few from my neighborhood who I had some fun with: a woman who we shared a good friend with though we weren't really friends ourselves, the boy from behind my house who was my enemy growing up yet he seems to remember me fondly, and an ex- greaser who frankly scared me and I kept the hell away from him and his equally scary big sister. I hadn't seen him since he was a little boy but he says he remembers me and said something about remembering me as 'very pretty'. Ha. I did see the proud young man who treated me scornfully for not being as bright as him and I had kicked off his loafer as I couldn't take his sneers any more. I did not remind him of that. He remembered me and was polite. He really did not age but he also didn't get any taller. Yes I had friends in high school but none of them were there. I had hoped that maybe they would pop in. The friend of a friend and I took refuge in each other and talked about our lives. But having to shout to each other over the bad music tired us both and it was back into the drizzle, driving the surreal name changing road in the dark back home early.