Briana: She's Gone! :(

Folks, that's my first-ever emoticon right there in that title. Something about the occassion calls for a... symbol that expresses the profound sadness we're feeling today, so I had to bust it out. To reiterate, :(

I took Briana to the airport this morning at five-ish. Got a call later in the day saying she made it back to Akron where I'm sure they gave her a welcome-home parade and her parents will lavish her with attention before she heads off for her sophomore year at Toledo U. Some life.

Despite the fact that our apartment is so small, and Briana's nocturnal schedule was sometimes... tricky, I already miss her and the apartment seems a little sad without her. Sure, there's a decided lack of bad music coming from laptop speakers, but... we miss her.

At dinner I mentioned her name in conversation with Rachel, and Zora began to look very concerned. She went to what was Briana's room, checked it out. Looked out the kitchen window. Asked to look out of the bathroom window. Pointed off into the distance. It made me kind of sad to think that her memories of Briana's visit will probably be occluded by words when she gets them, and the pile of memories she's bound to put on top of this summer, but I suppose that's the way it goes. I remember blurred images from what must have been my first couple of years, so maybe she'll remember Briana picking her up, or blinking into the late-morning light, or quietly eating a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, or falling asleep next to her car-seat on rides from the beach. Who knows? I'll remember them, at least.

Briana was always very sweet with Zora; very patient and sharing. Here she is helping Zora with her hair. You'll notice you can see the floor in this photo, so I think that might date this image back to the first couple of days of Briana's visit, before she unleashed her shoe collection.



And here she is with Zora at SoundSession, wherein Providence introduced its funky self to Briana. We hope she makes it back for next year's parade!