Making and Remembering Memories
When my sisters and I were younger, we would go to visit my great grandmother in Katonah, NY. Her backyard opened up to the elementary school there, and I remember the big red slide vividly. It got smaller as I got bigger. We would close the day with a trip to town, eating at The Blue Dolphin, having pasta and lemon sorbet served in an actual lemon, shopping at Squires and grabbing a hot chocolate at the Starbucks on the corner. I haven’t been there in probably nearly a decade.
My sister Julia was driving home from Philadelphia yesterday and offered to time it so she could pick me up from a train station outside of the city. It just so happened that Katonah was the best option for both of us.
I got off the train and was hit with instant nostalgia. Julia said she felt it too. The town was cuter than we remembered, and it was a great pit stop. We grabbed some sandwiches and hit the road. She’s studying for the MCAT currently and asked if I wanted to help her with her flashcards. Want is a strong word, but of course I would help. To my surprise, I recognized a lot of the cards because she was focused on the psychiatry portion of the exam (one of my majors was psychology). It made me feel like I could take the MCAT tomorrow… I absolutely cannot and will never be doing that. Julia and I spent the next two hours laughing over the functional attitude theory, the elaboration likelihood model, coercion theory, and several others. We came up with funny ways to remember different terms, from Frozen references to elm trees and the leaves changing – whatever works, right? I don’t know anyone else I could have had such a good time studying for the MCAT with.
Thanks for the built-in best friends and nostalgia, Mom!
The Bam Cam 