I picked up the photograph and studied it fondly. The photograph looked almost yellowed; such is the fate of all photographs taken in the 80s. As if the three little girls in the photograph weren’t testament enough to how much time had gone by.

            There was Hannah on my left, smiling almost shyly to the camera. But we all knew that Hannah would turn out to be anything but shy. She alone conjured up the craziest ideas, and possessed the motor-mouth speech that would dictate her next adventure to her minions: me and Donnah. Scare the Maids, Busted Eardrums, The Wall of Arcadia... the list of her crazy ideas is endless, and yet these crazy ideas are what set my childhood apart from everyone else’s.

            Donnah stood to my right, with a mischievous grin on her face. While Donnah was my partner in crime, she was such a good girl (and so was I) that we got away with almost anything, including making potions in the bathroom, streaking through the garden in our Sunday dresses and slippers, and burying prized marbles in the dirt. I laughed to myself, struck by how misleading this picture could be. Hannah’s shy smile should have been Donnah’s, and vice versa: Donnah was now the most prim-and-proper cousin I knew.

            And there I was, perched on a bicycle much too big for my three-year-old frame. I loved that bicycle, even if it wasn’t mine. Hannah would never let me ride it, but I loved it nonetheless. It was blue with yellow stars, and something about it just seemed so magical. Yet the look on my face was hardly ecstatic: maybe I just wanted the photo-op done and over with so I could ride the precious bicycle off into the sunset of my garage.

            The sound of an incoming text message jolted me out of my reverie: “Hey Ab, just got back from Cebu. Maybe we could get together before your trip. You could stay at our house or vice versa.” I looked at it, confused and slightly disoriented. It was as though I had traveled through twenty years and wasn’t quite ready to accept that we were no longer three little girls riding bikes on a sunny afternoon, but that Hannah was a reporter at a prestigious network, Donnah was working in an advertising agency, and I was newly unemployed.

            I wasn’t quite sure what to reply, so I set the cellphone aside. Maybe it was too soon, too overwhelming to face that reality now.

            So I looked back at the yellowed photograph, at the three smiling young girls who only wanted to ride their bikes on that sunny afternoon, and allowed my thoughts to take me back again, to twenty years ago.