I know almost nothing about my mother's adolescence, although I have often looked at this picture of her and wondered whether it holds the answers to such questions as: Who took her to the prom? Was she in love with Elvis or Buddy Holly? What were her best subjects in school? Which boys did she have crushes on? What kind of things did she fight with her parents about, if at all? Adolescence is such a confusing time. But she never really talked about her childhood, growing up in Georgia.

I know I've seen some of her report cards, but we probably have lost them in one of many moves and I don't remember anything about them. In addition, we used to have some of her yearbooks. They had all the usual things written in them. Some personal notes, and many "have a nice summer"-type messages that you get from people who don't know you that well. I do know she enjoyed high school (at Campbell High, home of the Spartans) enough that she went back for her 30-year reunion in 1989.

She was probably in her mid-teens here (although she might be as old as 18). She graduated from high school in 1959, and soon left behind the sweater sets for nurse training and a job in California, where she later met my dad. He told me once that she worked for years to hide and lose her southern accent. By the time I was born, she pretty much spoke like a native Californian, although her sisters still have heavy Georgia accents.