.441 and happy bday crystal

and then the very next day, they surprised her mother, crystal, with a party of her own, orchestrated by tyti, herself.

  

i don't tell her, in any serious way, and not nearly as often as i should, that i love her greatly, and that our childhood memories are some of my fondest. we are just 10 months apart, her closer to the grave than i, and that fact has been, both, nemesis and joke alike for all these years. she once convinced me that i wasn't actually turning 11, because she had always been older than i and it was impossible. subsequently, this was the time i successfully learned that we were to be the same age for at least two months at the end of each year.

my first cousin. my uncle harold's youngest daughter. we were pretty tight. we dressed alike, we fought over everything and battled through our changing teens, sometimes, close, sometimes distant, always loyal when it mattered most. we used to play the alphabet game ("a my name is amy, my husband name is alfred, we live in alabama and we sell airplanes"), dying of laughter and delirium the closer we got to z, huddled under blankets, feet to head, in crystals twin bed. we would stay up entire nights watching horror films in the living room waiting to see which one of us would crash before sunlight seeped between folds of thick parlor curtains in the summer time. the first time she lived alone, we sat with friends playing drunken board games in that same living room until she lovingly held my head back when i had to throw up shortly after. 

and this is what i was thinking when she walked through mo and tavoy's door unknowingly that evening. i saw 'child her', 'teen her', then 'woman her', all in one flash, and i gasped. i'm not around my family often, anymore, and i cannot guarantee that this is the start to me being so (because my path is my own) but in this moment, i remembered all the other moments, that made me so very happy to be here celebrating with her, now. my cousin, my heart, my friend...whom i cherish...whom i love...even though i dare not say so often enough...

dear family: click here to view entire (private) gallery and download images. 

shoot me a message on FB or text me or crystal for password.

(i copied/pasted this last bit from the last blog like a bawse.)