Laurustina

This one is from early 2008, and it was one of the first photos saved on Ash’s cell phone. The eyebrows and the sweater are the coded datestamps. Without them, I’d just see G.T. somewhere between fourteen or fifteen.The eyebrows mark this as having been taken not long after the Christmas Eve we spent the drive out to Mr. j’s grandparents house trying to figure out what G.T. had done to his brows. He swore it was nothing, that he hadn’t trimmed or shaved or otherwise altered them, but no one was buying it. And I remember that the more we prodded, the more frustrated he got, until we had to drop it. Not one of us in that car on that ride that night, suspected anything. I figured it was like that time when out of sheer boredom, I shaved my arms had to spend the next two weeks, being teased by my family about my cactus arms while the prickly little hairs grew back.

The sweater though, marks the photo as some time in February, because it was one of the first pieces of clothing that I bought for Ashlie. I’d gone shopping for her twice by myself, and this was the first time that she’d agreed to accompany me. She wouldn’t touch any of the clothes or racks, but stood nearby with a practiced bored expression while I held things up, giving me secret signals (a curled, disdainful lip for “no”, an arch of one butchered eyebrow for “maybe” and an almost fearful, wide-eyed glancing furtively around for what I finally figured out was “yes!”. The sweater, if I remember correctly, was just a maybe, but I bought it anyway because it was the same color as her grey/green eyes.

What I mean to say is that it struck me again over this joy-filled weekend, how packed with pieces of our lives and memories these little freeze-frames can be, and how lucky we are all to capture every little scrap of those memories that we can.