Alexis' Blurty

Box of Photos
So, today was boring. I woke up, joked around with my mom, watched "The Osbournes" marathon on MTV (actually, that was a lot of fun, I love that show, I have a poster of them on my wall) and knit. I can't believe I'm not done with Kelly's scarf. Not that I'm not liking knitting it, because as I knit I often think about school and how I would sit at night finishing a scarf or hat with Kristen working on her Tori site. One night we stayed up until almost 5am, and the next day I went to work at 9:30am. When I got back to the dorm I found out that Kristen had jokingly told Maren that I had forced her to stay up with me. I miss the little look of guilt that Kristen gets on her face. It's like the "cat that just caught the canary" as my grandma would say. Right, boring day, but tonight I was helping my mom move stuff back into the apartment (she just had it redecorated) and I found the boxes that my mom keeps photos in. The first two had really old pictures of me from when I was really small. I even found this little piece of paper that my mom used to write down the dates little milestones after my birth, you know, first full night's sleep, first words, first tooth, etc. In the third box, which must have meant that I was about seven years old, I found pictures of me at my old school's fair. Every year Manhattan Country School has the Farm Festival and when you're small, it's a whole lot of fun. I was looking through pictures of me with my old friends, getting our faces painted, eating cupcakes we iced ourselves, sitting and talking, when I found a picture of myself and Emily. Emily Bushkin was one of my best friends when I was litte. She moved to Suffern, New York after First Grade because her mother was dying of breast cancer. I didn't speak to her for a while, but in about Fourth Grade we started writing to each other. We wrote about our favorite TV shows and sent pictures, because 3 years for us was a long time. We even visited each other a few times. We kept in touch until we were about thirteen, and I don't know what happened then. I often thought about writing her, but never actually did. Emily died in a car crash three years ago, she was sixteen years old. A drunk driver hit the car she was riding in, it went off the road and tumbled down an embankment. She and the driver, a friend of hers, were both dead by the time the ambulence got there. Thing is, I had no idea that Emily had died until last April. I mentioned to my mother that I wanted to write to Emily, to catch up again. My mother was silent, which made me uncomfortable. She told me that Emily had died, that she had seen it on the news, that she hadn't wanted to tell me because she was afraid that I would be too upset. Emily was a beautiful girl, adopted from South America. I remember playing with her at school and going out to dinner when she came to visit me in the city. I miss her as I did before I knew she was dead, but now I know I waited too long. She didn't have to die. I framed the picture and I'm taking it back to school with me. I feel so sorry for her father, who is now all alone without his wife, his daughter, his family.

Current Mood: nostalgic
Current Music: Indigo Girls