...to an old friend...

A few months ago I got word that a childhood friend of mine had passed away suddenly. I have great memories of our friendship and had written about one of them a couple years ago in an email to my dad. She would have been 31 in January also. Heres a great memory.


me and Kori 

Dedicated to Kori.

12/30/2003

Today I was writing on our dry erase board with a brand new green marker, and the aroma of it brought back a memory Id like to share with you:

Kori Coon and I were coloring outside on the picnic table in the grass in the back yard. It was summertime. I was wearing a blue tank top with Big Bird holding a bunch of balloons on the front of it. I had gotten a booster shot a short time before this day and the scab was ready to come off my arm. I was very careful not to touch it. I accidentally banged it on the picnic table as I turned around and it came off. I started to cry because it hurt a little. Kori thoughtfully ran and picked me a rosebud from moms garden and gave it to me. She blew on my arm to help the sting go away. She had spent the night the evening before and she was still in her pink nightgown and bare feet. We continued to color. It was hot and the Santa Ana winds were blowing the pages of our coloring books closed. We had them held open with two glasses of orange juice. Sarah and Calli were building a fort under the picnic table with some sheets and beach towels, unfazed by the small scab that had so recently fallen into the grass they were crawling in. My green pen ran out of ink and I situated it back into the old fruitcake tin mom donated to hold our loose crayons and markers. Kori wanted to use it so she proceeded to retrieve it from the sea of old crayons. She decided she would lick it to make the color come back. She soon became tired of licking my green marker so she dipped it in her orange juice. This was a great trick and we continued to use the green and orange juice marker for the rest of the morning. For years after, when I used the green marker in my coloring tin full of pens, it smelled horrible. Like soured feet. But that marker worked longer than any marker I had. And I still have the scar on my arm from that scab.

Funny how much can come back from one simple smell.