Brandon

This is the home of my oldest friend, from way back in Kindergarten at Charlotte Country Day School. We were bffs all through elementary school and drifted apart, as kids do around Jr. High age.
Through keeping in touch online I offered to come advise her about irradiating mold from some antiques in the house. I met her there yesterday.

It was great to see Brandon, and to see the very cool old house I remember loving so much, like a second home. On the back porch were kittens! Some things never change.

My Mom loves to tell about the time when we were probably 6 or so and Brandon's cat had a litter of kittens. She put a sign in front that said "Kittens for sale!" She did not yet know that kittens are not very lucrative...

Here's the familiar patio with the exact same furniture we had at my house.

I love this picture of Brandon kitten wrangling! She is a cat lover in a big way. She's also a horse lover and one of only two friends who shared my love of horse riding growing up. Brandon and Vanessa are my two horse friends, and also both happen to be my oldest friends. Those bonds you form as a child are unbreakable.


This was her playhouse. Naturally I thought it was the coolest thing EVER. We once tried to dig a little pond in the dark brown dirt in front of it, condeming her goldfish to a murky and sure death. We poured the fish in the mud hole and lost him right away. I thought it would be easier to keep up with such a bright orange thing in all that dark water...but I was wrong.

This is in her brother's room. There is a built in bed with this empty box at the head. We used to put things in this weird hole in the paneling. It was a hole that lead to an unknown universe in her house...
The times we had in there!
This was the fancy room in the front of the house. You know the kind, all beautiful furniture and gorgeous things that you're not supposed to touch. I LOVED it. Her Mom has exquisite taste. The house I grew up in was beautiful, but not filled with history like this one. I think my love of old houses and architecture was fostered at least in part by the time I spent in Brandon's house.

I have to say, I expected it to look smaller, I hadn't been there in over twenty years, but it didn't. It was pretty much just as I remember. The smell took me back as soon as I walked in! Back to the days of riding her horse around the circular gravel drive, through the cedar filled woods, all over land that has since become "The Arboretum", a yuppified shopping area that I have always resented. Back to the generations of white kittens with gray spots on their heads that ruled the property with furry fists, roasting marshmallows in the fireplace, pushing the upholstered love seats together to make a big bed for us to sleep in together, singing along to the Grease album on vinyl and dreaming of days when we would wear pink satin jackets and smoke cigarettes like the teenagers in the movie, "playing model horses", riding real horses, running around in our bathing suits, baking zucchini bread and chocolate pound cake, staying up late, pilfering through her older brother & sister's stuff, having a blast.
You can't make new old friends.
I am so grateful to have so many friends who I spent formative years with. Vanessa & Karla, Molly, Tiffany, and Brandon. I'm rich!