Augustus Rose

I just got off the phone with Sam. It was a nice phone call, lasting about 40 minutes. We don't talk to each other very often. She was my best friend all through high school, and even after we graduated and I hung around Oxnard while she got married and had a baby. We were still really good friends even after our lives took such different directions. The last time I saw her was in August when I went home for a week or two and spent a few days with her and her family in San Diego. Her daughter, August, was almost a year and a half old at that time. I hadn't seen her since she was like, 9 months. She grows so fast! I remember when Sam told me that she took her first steps. It made me want to cry. Now that August is almost two, she's talking. When Sam first told me that August said her first word, I denied that it ever happened. She mailed me a list of about 20 words that August can say, and still I was in denial. Today while talking to Sam I could hear August in the background. "Who's that?". "It's Auntie JessJess!".

It makes me so sad that August is growing up and that I don't get to see it. I guess that I was disillusioned enough to believe that Sam and I would get married around the same time, that we'd have babies at the same time and live close enough to visit frequently. But I guess life doesn't turn out how you expect it to. It's just hard to know that although Sam talks about me in front of August, and that she understands that there is an Auntie JessJess, that she doesn't actually know who I am. She could see a picture of me and have no idea that the person in the photo is Auntie JessJess.

Hearing her say "apple" was hard. I wish that I were close enough to watch her grow up. I wish that I could be the aunt always around to spoil her.

It's ridiculous because I'm so happy with my life and completely content, and then I hear August talk and it's hard. It's really hard. It's easy for me to be away from my family and even from my really good friends: Ashley, Eugene, Camille, the mission boys, even Sam. But I wish that I could have August around.