Collected Item: “Apart for Eleven Months”
Give your story a title.
Apart for Eleven Months
What sort of object is this: text story, photograph, video, audio interview, screenshot, drawing, meme, etc.?
Photographs
Tell us a story; share your experience. Describe what the object or story you've uploaded says about the pandemic, and/or why what you've submitted is important to you.
This year, my daughter’s Girl Scout troop, like every other troop in the country, has moved their cookie sales online. Even cookie pick up is strange this year. Instead of having families come by and pick up cookies to sell, I leave the cookies on the porch with the receipt and wave through the window. When my best friend (and co-leader) came with her daughter to pick up cookies, we chatted through the window and took a picture to save the bizarre moment. I mentioned that when another family from the troop came to get cookies, I almost didn’t recognize the girl because she had gotten so tall. My best friend then had the genius idea to take a picture of her daughter by my front door. She said I should take a picture of my daughter so we could compare their heights, as they have been the same size their entire lives. And then she said a statement that shocked me: “I mean, it’ll be a year next month since they’ve actually stood next to each other.” I guess since my best friend and I text almost every day, and have seen each other over Zoom, I hadn’t processed how truly long it has been since we’ve all been physically together. I met my best friend when I was 11, we were college roommates, married guys we were all in the same friend group with in college, had our first kids exactly six months apart from each other, our second kids two months apart from each other, and live 15 minutes away from each other. We have been lock step since we were kids, so not seeing each other for almost a year is insane. As the picture shows, our daughters are still basically the same height, so even apart, we're still lock step. Still, hoping we’ll be able to be together again before the girls grow anymore!
Use one-word hashtags (separated by commas) to describe your story. For example: Where did it originate? How does this object make you feel? How does this object relate to the pandemic?
friendship. motherhood, Girl Scouts, kids, height, growth, cookies, Girl Scout cookies
Who originally created this object? (If you created this object, such as photo, then put "self" here.)
Kathryn Jue
Give this story a date.
2021-01-29