From my B.O.M

Printed papers are from Imagination Project - Center City designs. All the papers, cardstock & flowers came in a kit from Scrapgoods. 'Dreaming is free' is a sticker from my 'very old & I do not know who makes them' stash.

Summer 1984: This has to be one of the ugliest photographs of me. It was a bad photograph to start with and now it is deteriorating with time. Yet scrap it I must because it holds special memories. I remember so clearly the day this was taken. I had finished that very day the last of the Government Board exams. I had done reasonably well and I was happy with myself. I came home knowing that my school days were done with. Now I had a three month break and then I would head to college.

It was evening and we has fluorescent lights which accounts for the bad lighting. I had finished dinner and was in my pajamas. I remember discussing with my mother about everything that I would now have to do, all the changes that were to happen shortly. I would have to begin commuting by train ~ there being no colleges within walking distance from the house and the better ones were in the city. I showed my mother how I would need to carry a different kind of bag to college ~ not a knapsack anymore ~ I was tired of those from school. She said she hoped I’d do my hair differently. I wished for some nice new clothes. And then she decided to take a photo of me strutting around the house pretending to be a college going girl.

I had everything ahead of me ~ so many expectations; such happy anticipation about all that was yet to come; when I look at this photo I remember so clearly that feeling of unadulterated excitement! This would be the perfect occasion to say that the world then was my oyster. All I had to do was open it up …