I first met Jerria Bates* the way I met all of my friends in elementary school: I was sitting alone at a classroom table pretending to do something interesting, and one day she appeared and asked if I wanted to be her friend. It was the fourth grade, and we had all just read “The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle.” Jerria looked exactly like the cover’s depiction of Charlotte Doyle: auburn curly hair, thick-cheeked and sincere-eyed. Coincidentally, she was also battling pirates, but I wouldn’t learn about that until later.

“Okay,” I said.

We were almost immediately inseparable, sharing a love for books and bouncy balls, and she was the first friend I had that wasn’t usually mean or hurtful to me in some way. Technically speaking, the day that Jerria and I became friends, I was “taken” — claimed as a best friend of another girl, as girls do. But Jerria convinced me that it wasn’t right for alleged best friend to push and hit me, “she’s a bully, and besides, she smells bad” — and so I dropped Treya like a disappointing one-night fling from Senor Frog’s, and Jerria and I commenced with sleep overs, playing with Barbies and her pet hamster. Not to mention jokes about our teacher, Bob — an acronym, we decided, for Body Odor Bob. Smell was a big thing in the fourth grade.

After my little sister got a knife pulled on her by a homeless man during recess, our parents decided it was high time we got the hell out of that neighborhood, and thus ended my brief education by the city of Minneapolis. We moved to the suburbs.

The strange thing is, I don’t remember a single thing about leaving. I don’t remember my last day in Mount Sinai, tearful embraces, goodbyes, nothing. For all I know we never said goodbye, she was out sick that day, it didn’t occur to us. But afterwards we started writing each other letters, back and forth, pages and pages and pages.

Pictures taken during three hours of frisbee-golf playing in beautiful, meadowy and wooded terrain: three. Pictures taken of friends’ cat once we returned to Worcester: twenty-one.

UFOs in late afternoon

Oh hai mz Banks I am America’s Next Top model plz?

I was in a conundrum about which out of two pictures of Peek-a-Boo to post. They were both so adorable oh my god. “Post both of them,” Jurvis said. “That way people will know where your priorities lie.”

Color me convinced. Here you go: ROTFLMAO.

I’d have taken more (exciting) pictures, but so many of the activities were illegal. So instead, you get a background of old people, and some coffee.

Jesse in the Eveready Diner

I miss ordering coffee.

Also on the menu: crazy new buildings appear on the rolling plains of our alma mater, a diary is found (and stolen, and read), and we finally visit the illustrious “Storm King.” You can view more pictures here.

I spent too many dark weeks agonizing over whether or not I should go to Kenesaw.

Rain poured from grey skies, washing Boston away, and I was holed up inside checking all the airline sites: comparing prices, weighing layover times and the distances from airports. I would leave on Friday morning. Transfer in Minneapolis. Land in Omaha, then three hours by car. I would leave two days later on Sunday, three hours to Omaha. Flights magically appeared and disappeared, prices fluctuated, plans changed. Indecision consumed me. Granted, part of the problem was that I was losing my mind at the time and just needed a goddamn nap, but the situation overall was a tricky one.

Located in Kenesaw in the first weekend of June was as follows: a birthday party for my grandma, also known as a major family reunion. That’s an event we don’t take lightly on my mom’s side of the family. We’re all a little scattered, from Nebraska to Colorado to Arkansas to Canada, and real family get-togethers of the extended variety have been few and far between. I can count on one hand the amount of times I’ve seen my grandparents, so that if someone were to ask me to describe my grandmother, the metaphors and similes wouldn’t come easily. “Well, my mom told me once that she and I share a love for reading, and she’d make a great pen pal. Also, one time I saw her put sugar packets in her purse while we were eating at The Country Buffet.”

Perhaps it is needless to say, that it wasn’t the kind of event that I could R.S.V.P to with a “sorry, but that travel sounds like a pain, and I think I’d rather get some errands run that weekend.” Who knows when I’d see these people again — if (I was constantly reminded by advisers) I’d see my grandma again. “I just really want you to see your cousins,” my mom said. “You won’t believe how similar you’ve all turned out. I think you’d have a blast.” Friends, peers, an acquaintance in Kansas City all agreed that this event wasn’t really optional.

So when I called my mother to let her know that I wouldn’t be coming in June (reasons: forty hours of travel and twelve hours in Kenesaw, travel and time is money, the last time I got on a plane I got food poisoning and wound up stuck in Detroit at midnight with nothing but my own tears and pigtails and a luggage claim lady questioning my legal adult status) only to hear my mother (my therapist’s theory: I still have a subconscious need to rebel) reply that she understood, and that this was okay . . . I was surprised. She’d really been pushing for me to come. I didn’t think this part would be so easy.

“I’ll organize something else, maybe?” I said lamely. “Maybe our cousins can meet up in a . . . more convenient location, or something, next summer.” (And the cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon, cooed a voice in my ear.)

“That sounds like a great idea,” my mom said. “I know . . . you’ll be missed. But if you can’t come, you can’t come.”

Relief. The promise of rest, of a weekend out of planes, out of cars, in bed with the breakfast restaurant down the street and the book I’d cozy up with near the windowsill. But mostly, the relief of a decision made. I hate drawing things out. I’ve dated men for longer than I should have, due to the blindness caused by over-deliberating. I’ve gotten poorer scores on standardized tests. Better to just decide, and finally, this decision, this three days of my life was figured out.

I’d come to regret the decision a mere two days later with a single phone message. “Just so you know, I got some results back, from a biopsy. I’ll be getting a hysterectomy sometime soon.” I called my mother back and scolded her for leaving a voice mail like that, and in this fashion neither of us communicated effectively.

I was staying home, in Boston.

One of two pictures I took on Mother’s Day, spent with Jurvis and his family:

Sailing is complicated.