As I’m about to embark on a trip back east for my high school reunion, I’ve already begun the journey through nostalgia which I actually started with a Facebook reunion a little over two years ago. When do we start the bittersweet trips back to childhood?  When do we trade places with our parents?  If you have kids, you probably know the game.  “When my mom was my age, I was … starting middle school, graduating high school, in college…”  Soon to be replaced with, “How can the years till my daughter starts college be fewer than the years passed since I was a college student?”

I’m excited to reconnect with friends and classmates I haven’t seen in years.  I’ve been working on the reunion committee and enjoyed getting to know some people I ‘ve last seen in the days before laptops, Facebook, or i Phones. 

Part of the voyage is reminiscing about people who’ve influenced the person I’ve become.  Some people made  a pretty significant splash.  Mr. Wagner, my Honors History Teacher, and Mme. Goeller come to mind as well as my aunts who always listened.  Some people make one of those circles which come when you skip stones across a pond.

Growing up on Ruskin Court in Wayne, New Jersey back in the seventies, my neighbor Kiki Diamond definitely made some of those circles.   Kiki was probably the most glamorous woman I knew.  She wore her dark hair flipped up with a fall.  She had a stylish wardrobe and probably wore false eyelashes.

The piece de resistance was her family’s white and silver Christmas tree.  As an impressionable girl in white go-go boots, I thought those mod aluminum trees were the height of glamour, the kind you’d decorate to the sounds of Frank Sinatra and clinking ice. 

When discovering my personal style, I was probably subconsciously influenced by my glamorous neighbor.  I’ve always aspired to be the most glamorous woman in the room. 

So, Saturday night, as I put on a rather spectacular black dress and my four inch Louboutins, I will be privately toasting Kiki, my personal style icon. 

And I’m still dreaming of that glittery white Christmas tree.