Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

“Who is that in the picture with you?” asked Grandma, pointing at the picture hanging from the corkboard.

Two little toddlers crouched in a red and blue sandbox under a dying sky; one with two shovels and the other with two pails. One of them- me, I could tell by the curly light brown hair framing her head- was patting the sand almost in an innocent manner. I could tell that I was looking reproachfully at the other girl, who stared sullenly at her toes. Her own dark eyes faced downwards. I remembered.

The sand was squishy beneath my feet and it was getting in my clothing too. I patted the golden sand with my shovel while the sky turned a warm orange above me. Ana sat crossed ways from me, and looked down at her warm brown toes, poking out from a blanket of that sand. She looked up at me through her dark lashes. Then she did it. She tried to take my extra shovel. I hid it from her, placing it behind me, and kept flattening the sand. Only, this time, it was a warning. Being a toddler- I was very possessive of things I wanted. Ana was younger then I so she got the pails and I got the shovels. That’s just how it was in my brain. It was taboo to try to steal the shovel I wasn’t using.

“Yeah, that’s my friend Ana. The one who moved to Wisconsin,” I replied.

Grandma gave me a knowing look. Her pale, milky blue eyes didn’t blink as she gave me a reassuring smile. I knew that look. Then Grandma walked away.

I walked to my room, thinking about Ana. We might as well have been born cousins, or even sisters. Ever since the day when Ana was taken home from the hospital we were inseparable. Age didn’t matter. Neither did the street that separated our houses. Our mother’s brought us to play with each other so much so that I don’t have a single memory of us not being together. At least- not until school started for me, and then for Ana too. Then…it was different. But it had been different before that, when the two of us became three of us.