Sunflowers and moonbeams

I know there's something to be said about looking at other people's vacation pictures - usually, that "they're so boring." But my friend Andra just got back from her honeymoon in Switzerland, and I find myself repeatedly browsing through her album, looking just one more time, until Snapfish decides I've overstayed my welcome.

I went to Switzerland during the summer of 1995 as part of a "teen tour" through Europe, in which we saw about six countries in four and a half weeks. Do I have stories from that trip! Remind me, one day when I have blogger's block, to tell you about meeting Richard Simmons at the top of the Roman Colosseum, missing our train from Venice to Munich (while our bags were already on it!), or how we made friends with a Tabasco sauce heiress who, at 19, had already been in and out of rehab more times than Lindsay Lohan. But anyway...

Of all the countries we saw, I have always remembered that Switzerland was my favorite. I had never seen mountains like that, as high and jagged and snow-capped, even in summer! Set against the lush green rolling hills, and architecture that continually made me feel like I was in a fairy tale, or The Sound of Music, I was smitten with Switzerland.

Browsing through Andra's album, I recognized a few sites, like the covered bridge in Lucerne, but mostly just marveled, nostalgic and envious, at the familiar-yet-forgotten landscape. Her pictures looked a lot like mine; yet, at the same time, they looked nothing like mine. Mine were taken with a teenage hand more than ten years ago, before digital cameras let us all delete and re-take anything that wasn't immediately album-worthy. Like her wedding photos, Andra's honeymoon pictures stirred something in me I wasn't totally prepared for and still can't explain.

And then I came to this:

You may recall that 1995 was also the year of the sunflower. I was in college then, and I think every girl had at least one sunflower poster on her dorm room wall, one shrunken t-shirt with a sunflower on the chest, and drew sunflower chains in the margins of her notebook during boring classroom lectures. Don't pretend you didn't.

That was also the summer that, when I wasn't on my trip, Andra and I spent quite a large amount of time together. We roller bladed around the town lake, drank fuzzy navels on the roof of her house, and even made a "Feel Good" mixed tape for all of our friends and decorated the cover with - can you guess? - sunflowers!

One of my favorite memories is a night that we drove down to hear her friend play at an 18+ club in Providence. It was a small little place and each band looked like they should be covering old Metallica songs, but there were a ton of kids from our graduating class there, so there was enough energy and drama in the room to keep my interest. Like most nights back then, word spread that one of the guys was having an after-party, so we drove back in anticipation of continuing the fun.

But, sometime in between the last set and our return home, the party got canceled, and we found ourselves with nothing else to do. Driving around aimlessly, we passed through a quiet street adjacent to a cornfield, and suddenly, I saw, high above the cornstalks, a whopping yellow full moon. Andra, who was driving, missed the vision before it passed behind the trees, so she put the car in reverse and drove like that, back a quarter mile, until it was again in plain sight. And then, as if the Iowa-like corn gave it a cue, the song "Footloose" came on the Feel Good Mix.

"Let's get out and dance!" I suggested, and we did just that. Ran through the cornfields, danced unselfconsciously to the song blaring out of the car windows, until it ended, and we got right back in. At 19, no cares in the world, except where the next party was and did you see that crazy full moon?!

Ultimately, we ended up just driving to the lake, sitting by the car, and listening to rest of the Feel Good Mix. I wrote, the next day in my journal, that "it was one of the best nights of the summer."

I know that we danced in a cornfield and not a sunflower field, but I have associated Andra with sunflowers ever since. Seeing that picture, at the end of a long roll of photos that already had me thinking of that summer, was like someone ripped into my subconscious and stole a memory I forgot I had. Presented it back to me in a way that, dream-like, wasn't exactly right, yet still made perfect sense.

When I shared this memory with Andra last week, she wrote back that, coincidentally, there had been a giant full moon at her wedding. And that just seems about right, considering that, for as long as I've known her, she's always brought a distinct light into my life.

Happy birthday, Andra, and congratulations again.