Nora & me in July of ’81

I’m flashing back to the summer when I turned 5 – to the month, actually.  Here is a picture of my first real childhood friend, Nora and I on stage at an outdoor amphitheater in the town where we grew up.

Nora lived right next door to me when we were little and I think my first sleepover was at her house too.  Almost all of my earliest memories, especially those in the summer, included playing with Nora, her little sister, Casie and my brother for hours and hours.  We would swing on our metal swing sets as high as we could before the frame would start popping out of the ground.  Or slide down the aluminum slide that was certainly hot enough to elicit 3rd degree burns on our bare skin.  Our dads would drive the cars into our backyard and wash them – I’m not sure why now that I think about it, but that was always one of my favorite things.  We played in our little plastic swimming pools from sun up to sun down tanning our little bodies a dark brown.

Speaking of that tan – it’s pretty clear that my mom did not put me in a bikini as a child.  See that ghost-white belly?  Yeah, I bet you thought that was a shirt, huh?  No, that was my stomach and from the looks of it, I am shielding my eyes from the glare reflecting off of it.  It also appears that my little 1/2 shirt seems to be riding up pretty high and not covering the parts it’s supposed to.

I think this picture is the reason why I rarely wear a swimsuit that doesn’t expose at least part of my stomach.  I can’t stand having a white belly!  It drives me crazy!  It’s not like I would be caught dead in a belly shirt today, but for some reason, I feel like the beach or the pool is the place for exposed midriffs, regardless of size, shape or tone.  (Side note, I always thought it was mid-drift, not midriff.)  I could post the picture of me in my bikini when I was 8 months pregnant with Kamryn to prove my point, but I’ll leave that to your imagination instead.