The Girls We Will Always Be
After a full ten months of writing these Chronicles, I’ve noticed that they’re evolving. And I'm okay with that.
Each Chronicle is a little snippet, a companion piece to a memoir in progress that is taking shape slowly, methodically, but surely. The original idea was to write short love stories. Not stories of incendiary passion, but rather love stories to Bonnie, to Joe, to the family and friends who populated my world, and to a time and place that no longer exist quite as I remember them.
Much of what I’ve written is rooted in memory. A chronicle, after all, is a diary of sorts. But I’ve come to realize that those memories don’t simply belong in the past. They continue to live within me, influencing how I see things, what I value, and whom I hold dear.
And sometimes, the past makes itself present in the most poignant and unexpected ways.
Perhaps that is what these stories have been about all along. Not simply where we’ve been, but the enduring connections between the lives we have lived and the lives we continue to live.
For twelve years, I attended Villa Victoria Academy, an all-girls Catholic school nestled in an idyllic stretch of land near the banks of the Delaware River, on the western edge of Trenton, New Jersey. The school occupied a once-private estate, named in honor of Victoria, the original owner’s wife, and was later donated to the Religious Teachers Filippini in the 1920s.
In time, this pastoral setting became a place of learning and discovery, where generations of young women, myself included, would grow and discover their potential.
Before college, my only co-ed school experience had been kindergarten, if you can count that. To some, spending twelve years in an all-girls Catholic school under the watchful eyes and stringent discipline of nuns might seem an undertaking not for the meek. But for me, it was nothing short of extraordinary. Villa left an indelible mark on my life, shaping me in ways I could scarcely have imagined at the time.
The school nurtured curiosity and instilled confidence, providing an environment in which we could truly flourish. The curriculum was rigorous, the teachers exceptional, but the students…ah, the students. They were truly remarkable. At the risk of sounding trite or overly sentimental, there was something genuinely special about our class. We were a wonderfully diverse collection of personalities who somehow managed to bring out the best in one another, notwithstanding the occasional angst and drama that come with teenage girls.
What made those years so extraordinary wasn't simply the education we received, but the friendships, camaraderie, and shared experiences that shaped us along the way. My teenage self had no inkling of how deeply those friendships would resonate throughout my life.
Our graduating class consisted of just 34 young women. In the years since, some have moved away, a few have drifted out of touch, but a remarkably large number of us have remained connected. Considering the decades that have passed, the different paths our lives have taken, and all that life has brought our way, that is no small thing.
Some circles are closer than others, of course, but whenever we find ourselves together again, the years seem to fall away. We pick up where we left off with the same easy familiarity, genuine affection, and occasional irreverence that characterized our school days. There is little need for explanation or pretense. We simply fall back into the comfortable rhythm of people who have known one another for a lifetime, and for a little while, the girls we once were are right there with us.
In my mind’s eye, I still see us as we were then: idealistic, full of fire, and utterly dauntless in our hunter-green blazers and plaid, kilt-like skirts. We were gloriously spirited in our youth, brimming with confidence and the unshakable conviction that we could—and would—conquer the world. The future stretched endlessly before us, filled with possibility and promise. We had the wonderful audacity to believe that anything was within our reach, never imagining how swiftly the years would pass, or that one day, time itself would become more precious than rubies.
Over the years, we had already lost two of our own,their absences still deeply felt. But nothing could have prepared us for what happened recently.
One of our classmates had her life taken from her in a horrific act of violence. Those of us who had shared those formative years with her at Villa Victoria were left heartbroken, struggling to reconcile the girl we had known with the terrible reality of her death. There was no explanation that could make such a senseless act any easier to comprehend.
Without diminishing the sorrow that accompanies any death, an illness may at least allow time to prepare, to absorb the painful reality of what is unfolding, perhaps even to begin the difficult process of saying goodbye. But when a life is taken so suddenly, there is no such preparation.
A text chain began with the news, gathering more of us as the messages passed from one classmate to another. Almost immediately, a collective feeling emerged: we had to—we needed—to see one another. Not weeks or months from now, not at the next reunion, but now.
There was no elaborate discussion about why. We simply understood.
Perhaps it was the sudden realization that time had become infinitely more precious. Or perhaps, at this stage of our lives, we have simply come to appreciate, with greater clarity than ever before, just how fragile and fleeting it all is.
In the days following the news, I sat alone on the sofa, numb, sifting idly through photographs––so many precious photographs from those Villa years. Always, there was Joe, his Minolta SRT 101 in hand, snapping away, capturing moments and documenting time. Without knowing it, he was preserving pieces of our lives, aworld we never imagined would one day feel so impossibly distant.
Back then, they were simply photographs. Now, they had become something far more meaningful: fragments of a life we had shared, preserved long after the moments themselves had slipped away.
And as I looked through them, there she was among us, happy, innocent, and as certain as the rest of us that there would always be another tomorrow.
And so we were drawn together. To see familiar faces, to reminisce, and to find comfort in the company of women who knew us long before careers, marriages, children, and all the other experiences that have shaped our adult lives.
We gathered at the welcoming home of one of our own, each bringing a dish to share for the afternoon. We caught up, told stories about our friend—some familiar, others I was hearing for the first time. We exchanged photographs, lingering over her familiar face, remembering moments and details that might otherwise have been forgotten. There was laughter, too, as there always seems to be when old friends gather, even in the saddest of times.
Together, we made a donation to Villa Victoria in her name, a heartfelt gesture to honor her life and the place where our paths had first crossed. It was something tangible we could do when there was so little about what had happened that we could understand, much less change.
When I first began writing these Chronicles, she reached out to me, suggesting that we get together for lunch. She liked them, she wrote, and was both amused and touched by the photographs my father had taken all those years ago. She had known my parents, and I had known hers. But, as so often happens, life got in the way, and that lunch never came to pass.
There would always be another opportunity, another day, I thought.
Or would there?
I have returned to that message more than once, remembering how I casually assumed there would be another chance to see her. Most of the time, there is.
Until there isn’t.
Perhaps that is what I am learning, ten months into these Chronicles. The past is never entirely behind us. It travels with us, sometimes quietly, sometimes with an urgency we cannot ignore.
And the people who have shared those years with us become all the more precious with the passing of time.
We cannot go back to the days at Villa, nor would we necessarily wish to. But somewhere beneath the years, those spirited young women in their hunter-green blazers are still very much a part of who we are.
The girls we will always be.
Danielle Barber
Author’s Note: This blog supports a memoir-in-progress. The essays published here stand on their own and do not represent the full narrative, which continues to unfold.
