Creative Writing Post #4

Question #6 (Write a piece of creative nonfiction in the form of "My Mother in Two Photographs"....)

She's the one sitting on my lap in the high school band room. No one else would've dared to sit on the lap of the girl with the frizzy french braids and railroad tracks for teeth. She's the one with the long blonde hair who played the flute, which was only a smidge cooler than my whiny clarinet. She even dragged me on dates with her boyfriend. The three of us would giggle over heaping bowls of ice cream and stay up late watching movies.

We were involved in every aspect of each others lives. My creamy mac n cheese would never taste as good as it does if we had not had that late night craving seven years ago in her ivy wallpaper covered kitchen. But no matter what we did, the party would always move to the little upright piano in the living room where we would play and sing the songs our grandparents would have danced to.

But it's the summer of 2006, and she's leaving me. Leaving me for the ominous brick buildings and cobblestone walkways of Otterbein College. We stood in the high school gymnasium, she in her red cap and gown and me in my blue and pink strapless dress. We're both grinning ear to ear, but I was crying on the inside. She had a new future to look forward to while I only had the weekends to escape our high school in the cornfields and visit her in the booming city.

It had been a long, bumpy road. I dated her ex-boyfriend which left me without a best friend for three months, and we had taught half our high school how to knit during South Pacific rehearsals. She stayed at Otterbein. I tearfully, yet joyfully, left rural Ohio for the humid beaches of North Carolina. She traveled to New Zealand and Fiji while I walked the dusty streets Mexico and explored Scotland. Our friendship lived on through postcards and Skype calls.

Port Columbus International Airport. It's Spring Break of 2010, and she's waiting with my parents, jumping in her black heels and holding a welcome home sign. I don't have braces anymore. Not only is she now going on dates with me and my boyfriend, but she's also my Maid of Honor. Soon she will be moving back to Columbus, and so will I. Back to the little upright piano in the living room.