WRITER’S REFLECT
The girl who held time in her hands
Maybe she was onto something
There was a girl I knew in high school- not really a friend- more of a friend of a friend.
We didn’t hang out, but on one occasion I visited her at home.
We sat in her very clean and tidy bedroom.
She brought out what didn’t know existed.
A scrapbook. I mean a scrapbook on steriods. This girl was into something I did not know anything about.
Scrapbooking.
The school year was ending- it was perhaps Grade 10- and she had bits and pieces of our entire school year trapped in a scrapbook.
She even had small yellow and blue paper strips from a pom-pom taped into one page.
She had essays. She had a few photographs. She had Valentine’s Day cards. She even had a bracelet taped to one page of this thick photo album thing.
I didn’t know what to make of it. She was quite excited about it. She went through most of the pages with me.
Her father owned a stationary store in town. I suppose that’s where she got the scrapbooking bug from.
I talked to my sister about it later when I got home.
This was new to her too.
“What did she do that for?” My sister asked, incredulous. “To prove she’s alive?”
We weren’t aware that time- or at least not aware enough- that these high school days were fleeting moments- all of these faces that we knew and were so familiar with, would become strangers in a very short time.
We would all go our own way.
Fresh fleeting moments of youth had rushed by us, a flock of birds on the wing, their lifespan over as quick as thought.
This girl had taken handfuls of them, kept them alive in a jar, all this mix of fire flies and lightning bugs and memories and took them home to live with her.
