"Cold Nostalgia," by Abby Meinhart

I think about those days often. The ones where the sun shines perfectly through the clouds, the sprinkler is on, and I am wearing my jean shorts with Ariel on them and a rainbow mermaid scale tankini top. My hair is held down to my skin with a mixture of water droplets and sweat. I stop every so often to pull sand burrs out of my feet because I refuse to wear shoes. When you are young, there seems to be this filter surrounding you at all times. You know so little about the world and what is going on around you. All you know is the smell of the summer air and going to sleepovers where you eat too many sour gummy worms. 

I was at a sleepover with my friend, Haylee. She was turning 12 and there were three of us that went over to her house to spend the night. Her mom set out gummy worms, skittles, M&M’s, and basically any other candy a 12 year old could dream of having at their party. We listened to Justin Beiber and had cake before she opened her presents. This is the first time I remember ever thinking about money. She got 3 tickets to see Justin Beiber. I knew Haylee’s family had a lot and I knew we had much less. I watched Haylee’s mom that night. She brushed her hair and asked her many times if she needed anything. She was so attentive. Later that night we went out to try and ride Haylee’s skateboard, and I fell down and scraped my elbows. I didn't cry when I scraped them, but I did as Haylee’s mother blew gently on them before covering my scrapes with bandaids. 

When I was younger, many years before slumber parties with friends, at around seven years old, I stayed with my grandmother a lot. She wasn’t old, only in her fifties. But she was sick. She had a drawer full of pill bottles that she kept by her bed and she took them every morning and every night. I used to sit at her vanity as she put lipstick on me before church on Sunday mornings. As she leaned over me to click on her lamp, she smelled like a mixture of baby powder and insulin. I remember getting water at her house. The ice tasted like salt and the water was tinged with some kind of yellow color, but it was refreshing. In front of her house she had a big oak tree. Unfortunately, it was sick too and the tire swing held up by a rope the age of my father blew in the breeze taunting me to press my luck and climb onto it. I remember when she died. I was in fifth grade. For her funeral, I parted my hair to the side and wore a large white flower in my hair. The last time I saw her alive, she had an oxygen mask over her face, and she couldn’t breathe, let alone speak. I looked at her, eyes closed, mouth agape begging for air. Just over a month later we burned down her  house because it had a rat infestation. The tree went up in flames too. 

Before my grandmother passed away, I remember sitting outside on the wooden floorboards of the porch in the middle of summer. It was hot and my dad told me to wait inside, but I was too excited to see my mother. I sat on the porch for hours waiting for her car to pull up in the driveway. I knew she would probably bring me a gift. When she stepped out of the passenger side of the car, sunglasses covering her eyes, her clothes hung off of her skinny body in a not quite unflattering way. She looked beautiful in my eyes; with honey gold highlights streaking through her hair and her collarbone peeking through her camisole. I didn’t go with her that day. She stayed for less than an hour on the porch. We never even went inside, and we took a lot of pictures together and some of me by myself. I was elated to see her at the time,but looking back now I know she was in the height of her addiction. I know she just took the pictures to post on facebook, but the sun was shining down on her that day and her arms wrapped around me, and I felt like the luckiest little girl alive. 

I think the filter I mentioned is necessary. Reality is a hard pill to swallow, especially when you’re so small and unassuming. Time is a monster. It eats away at all of the good things in your memory until the only thing left is exhausted hopefulness that someday the filter will return and you will be able to live again in blissful ignorance. That you can love your mother despite her bony, drug-ridden body, that you can see your grandma plump and full of life, and that you never have to cry when someone blows on your elbows.