Two Saturdays ago, as my roommate and I lay on the roof of my house on Gordon Avenue planning out our afternoon activities, my roommate asked to see my phone.
A few weeks ago, as spring break came to a close and I prepared to leave my Key West haven, I couldn’t find my sister.
Right now I’m writing on my bed, typing rather, unable to release myself from the comfortable grip of lounging around horizontally.
It’s the beginning of March and in a few days I will be boarding a plane headed to Key West, Fl. It’s my first “college spring break;” the first time my final destination has been somewhere other than home in Gloucester.
This weekend my neighbor uploaded a picture to Facebook of the one-year-old golden retriever staying at her house.
I’m making a calendar today. A calendar of events, in which I map out my remaining months, weeks, days and hours — time I will spend at the coffee shop or the library or the small wicker desk pushed up against the wall in my oblong bedroom. I almost had a miniature panic attack last night as I lay in bed thinking about what my calendar would look like, but then I remembered that panic attacks wouldn’t fit into my weekly event lineup, so I quelled the urge to scream.
Standing in the middle of my living room on a Saturday morning, I realized that I had just lost something very important.
“Alright Mary Scott, but what’s your favorite?” “Peach! I think I’ll have to say peach.” “Then peach it is!” My young and bubbly bartender-in-training opened up her notebook and carefully wrote down, in delicate and curving handwriting, a few peachy drink recipes — recipes she would refer to later that evening when she took up her new post behind the bar.
I’m apt to loathe politics. It all seems to be happening so far away — in some other time, on some other planet.
There is a certain way we choose to deal with memories. Sometimes we cherish them, sometimes we compartmentalize them, and sometimes, when the memories are especially fragile, we must watch them from afar. This semester, I’ve been watching a memory, carefully stepping around the delicate periphery so as not to disturb the inner sanctum.
