Dear Blood Sister Coffee Can Buried in My Friend’s Backyard,
I’ve been thinking about my friend a lot lately. She was my first friend, and she was very formative to me, and recently I told my kids that she and I were blood sisters, a concept they had never heard of which is absolutely ridiculous, I thought.
And then I told them about you, Blood Sister Coffee Can, and I told them how you were buried in a spot by my friend’s family’s clothes line and how you had bandaids, Bactine, and a safety pin inside. (A safety pin my friend swore had been recently cleaned on a flame under the supervision of her brother.) And how she and I had crouched in the dirt and pricked our fingers and mingled our blood and then first aided ourselves, and I was laughing a little but you know what? My kids thought I sounded ridiculous.
And maybe I did. But really how can I explain that feeling, that knowledge that I had gained a family member and was now forever bound by blood? It was a moment in time and I am glad you were there.
-e.