Winter Mandarines
My dad is cleaning out his computer, and he emailed me some files of mine that were on his harddrive. I just read this again--I wrote it senior year of highschool, for a college prompt. I wanted to put it here.
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A little bell tied with a strip of red satin fabric follows me to school, carefully fastened to my backpack. My friends look at it with some confusion and ask me what it is, but I only smile slightly and finger its smooth ribbon.
“It’s nothing,” I say. That’s not true. It’s everything.
At the start of June, I received a letter from Ira, my first and best friend. We had parted seven years ago, when my family and I moved to the U.S., while she remained in Russia. Still, letters travel between us as we ourselves cannot. This particular letter was no different from the others--not at first. Sitting on my bed, I read as she described her graduation, the ceremony, the party. “They pinned those bells on us,” she wrote, “and we walked around jingling like some herd of cows. The younger kids must have been so jealous.”
Suddenly, a memory came back to me. I was in second grade, and it was the end of the school year. The tenth grade classes were graduating, and all the second-graders were to present them with their souvenir bells just before their party. Ira and I, dressed in our best white aprons and fresh lace cuffs, with crisp white bows in our hair, were each given a small black plate, and upon it -- the prettiest little bell, tied with loops and loops of tiny colored ribbons, shining like a star against the dark surface it rested on. I remembered my reluctance to give up the lovely treasure, thinking that surely the graduates had less want of it than I. At the same time, I could not help but be in awe of the tenth graders, of how grown-up they looked: the girls in lipstick and shimmering dresses, the boys in suits and ties.
After finally pinning the gently chiming bells upon the dresses of the graduates, Ira and I retreated to a corner of the room to escape the tumult of the festive occasion. Clutching the now-empty plates, we promised each other that someday, when it will be our turn to leave the school, we would be together, standing side by side no matter what. I can still see my solemn eyes reflected in hers, brown in black, black in brown.
I put the letter down, realizing clearly for the first time all that had changed between us since that moment. Promises were well and good, but some promises you cannot keep. I would never stand next to her, never share in her graduation, never follow through with a thousand other promises we made. Melancholy settled heavily in my mind. Ira is living the life she had planned on since childhood, and I -- where are my plans? Did I plan on switching countries? What kind of life would I have had if I had never left?
I would have grown up with people I had known since birth. I would have been an ordinary Russian schoolgirl, had ordinary Russian friends. I would have stayed in one school, I would have known what it means to really belong someplace. Belong to one place, instead of trying to decide if I was Russian or American, or both, or neither.
Do I really know Ira? Why do we remain friends? She does not know me, I am a stranger to her, as she is to me. Another memory--this time of our first meeting. I was six, and I was hiding behind a storage shed during play time in day care. I thought I was alone, but she came up behind me -- a girl in a red wool cap, hands hidden in her pockets.
“I have two mandarines,” she said, stretching out a gloved hand with the bright fruit. “Do you want one?”
I nodded.
And we were friends.
Whatever happened to the two little girls behind the day care woodshed?
I put my memories into my letter, sent it out to Ira, and prepared to wait for her response. I waited, and then forgot about the letter, and then remembered, and waited again -- and then it came. The letter was thick, stuffed with photos. The photos were of Ira’s graduation, but it was not exactly how I’d thought they’d be. The graduates that had looked so adult and poised, where were they? I was the same age now, and all I saw was Ira, the same Ira I had always known, smiling and joking with her friends, hugging the teachers. The six-year old girl had never gone away. Then I saw something red between the folds of paper in the letter and pulled it out. A tiny bell fell into my hand, a piece of scarlet ribbon tied tightly to it. I stared at the small bronze shape on my palm, and then I smiled, and then I laughed. Who cared about long-ago plans and childish expectations? They never turn out the way you thought they would anyway. I had my own life now, with new dreams and new goals, and they are just as good as those I left behind. I have my own identity, and she has hers. The promises we made, they weren’t about sacrificing your future, they weren’t about clinging to the past. They were about never giving up on friendship, about this little bundle of red and gold before me, about remaining together -- while living apart.
I picked up the last photo in the pack, a shot of Ira turning to the camera with a merry expression in her eyes. I met her eyes with mine, brown in black, black in brown. Then I slid the photo in among the rest and closed the envelope. It smelled of mandarines.
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I don't write to Ira much anymore. We really have grown apart by now.
But the little bell remains with me, always, still. And mandarines forever equal winter kindness.
------------------------------
A little bell tied with a strip of red satin fabric follows me to school, carefully fastened to my backpack. My friends look at it with some confusion and ask me what it is, but I only smile slightly and finger its smooth ribbon.
“It’s nothing,” I say. That’s not true. It’s everything.
At the start of June, I received a letter from Ira, my first and best friend. We had parted seven years ago, when my family and I moved to the U.S., while she remained in Russia. Still, letters travel between us as we ourselves cannot. This particular letter was no different from the others--not at first. Sitting on my bed, I read as she described her graduation, the ceremony, the party. “They pinned those bells on us,” she wrote, “and we walked around jingling like some herd of cows. The younger kids must have been so jealous.”
Suddenly, a memory came back to me. I was in second grade, and it was the end of the school year. The tenth grade classes were graduating, and all the second-graders were to present them with their souvenir bells just before their party. Ira and I, dressed in our best white aprons and fresh lace cuffs, with crisp white bows in our hair, were each given a small black plate, and upon it -- the prettiest little bell, tied with loops and loops of tiny colored ribbons, shining like a star against the dark surface it rested on. I remembered my reluctance to give up the lovely treasure, thinking that surely the graduates had less want of it than I. At the same time, I could not help but be in awe of the tenth graders, of how grown-up they looked: the girls in lipstick and shimmering dresses, the boys in suits and ties.
After finally pinning the gently chiming bells upon the dresses of the graduates, Ira and I retreated to a corner of the room to escape the tumult of the festive occasion. Clutching the now-empty plates, we promised each other that someday, when it will be our turn to leave the school, we would be together, standing side by side no matter what. I can still see my solemn eyes reflected in hers, brown in black, black in brown.
I put the letter down, realizing clearly for the first time all that had changed between us since that moment. Promises were well and good, but some promises you cannot keep. I would never stand next to her, never share in her graduation, never follow through with a thousand other promises we made. Melancholy settled heavily in my mind. Ira is living the life she had planned on since childhood, and I -- where are my plans? Did I plan on switching countries? What kind of life would I have had if I had never left?
I would have grown up with people I had known since birth. I would have been an ordinary Russian schoolgirl, had ordinary Russian friends. I would have stayed in one school, I would have known what it means to really belong someplace. Belong to one place, instead of trying to decide if I was Russian or American, or both, or neither.
Do I really know Ira? Why do we remain friends? She does not know me, I am a stranger to her, as she is to me. Another memory--this time of our first meeting. I was six, and I was hiding behind a storage shed during play time in day care. I thought I was alone, but she came up behind me -- a girl in a red wool cap, hands hidden in her pockets.
“I have two mandarines,” she said, stretching out a gloved hand with the bright fruit. “Do you want one?”
I nodded.
And we were friends.
Whatever happened to the two little girls behind the day care woodshed?
I put my memories into my letter, sent it out to Ira, and prepared to wait for her response. I waited, and then forgot about the letter, and then remembered, and waited again -- and then it came. The letter was thick, stuffed with photos. The photos were of Ira’s graduation, but it was not exactly how I’d thought they’d be. The graduates that had looked so adult and poised, where were they? I was the same age now, and all I saw was Ira, the same Ira I had always known, smiling and joking with her friends, hugging the teachers. The six-year old girl had never gone away. Then I saw something red between the folds of paper in the letter and pulled it out. A tiny bell fell into my hand, a piece of scarlet ribbon tied tightly to it. I stared at the small bronze shape on my palm, and then I smiled, and then I laughed. Who cared about long-ago plans and childish expectations? They never turn out the way you thought they would anyway. I had my own life now, with new dreams and new goals, and they are just as good as those I left behind. I have my own identity, and she has hers. The promises we made, they weren’t about sacrificing your future, they weren’t about clinging to the past. They were about never giving up on friendship, about this little bundle of red and gold before me, about remaining together -- while living apart.
I picked up the last photo in the pack, a shot of Ira turning to the camera with a merry expression in her eyes. I met her eyes with mine, brown in black, black in brown. Then I slid the photo in among the rest and closed the envelope. It smelled of mandarines.
--------------------------
I don't write to Ira much anymore. We really have grown apart by now.
But the little bell remains with me, always, still. And mandarines forever equal winter kindness.