When I was five years old, a woman moved into the house across from mine. She seemed to like me a lot, because she always had something good to say about me, or to me. She always showed me affection, in a distant sort of way, and she seemed to fill some void with me.



She came when I was five, the days of popsicles and ring around the rosies- summer. She looked like a lovely woman to be around. So one day, I decided to pay her a visit, and welcome her to our neighborhood. It was a warm, humid day in the suburb that I lived in, and the smell of freshly cut grass filled the air. I rang her doorbell, which chimed in the pleasant tune of “London Bridge.” The woman answered the door and a smile came across her face when she saw me, “ Oh, why hello there little one!” she said. “Umm ... hello, I’m Andrew, i just wanted to welcome you to our neighborhood.” I replied. “ Oh! Well, how thoughtful of you! It is a pleasure to meet you Andrew, I'm Mrs. Scott.” She said excitedly, “ Please! Come in, come in! I have fresh cookies and lemonade in the kitchen!”. I smiled at the thought of fresh cookies, “ Thank-you Mrs. Scott, I’d love to come inside”. So I went inside and enjoyed my cookies and lemonade. Mrs. Scott’s house smelled of magnolia blossoms and lemons. She had many pictures on her walls of herself, with a man and a little boy, who was about my age. These pictures looked very old, like they had been taken years ago. “Who are they, Mrs. Scott?” I asked as i wiped my face of cookie crumbs and lemonade, and I motioned over to the pictures. “Oh ... those ... well, The man is my husband, and the little boy, is my little Jonathan.” She said to me, her cheerful mood suddenly gone, as she stared off into space, as if remembering something. Telling by the look on her face, it wasn’t something pleasant.


Mrs. Scott told me the tragic story of how she lost the only family she had. “Well, it was around Christmas, and we had just gotten our beautiful, lush evergreen Christmas tree. Jonathan and I had just finished decorating it. Jonathan ... my little Jonny. He was my pride and joy, everything I lived for, anything and everything I ever did was all for him- Anyway ... Jonny was so sleepy that night, so I carried him to his bedroom. It was getting late anyway, so I began to blow out all the candles in the house so my husband and I could also go to sleep. I blew out all the candles ... I could have sworn I did ... unfortunately, I did not.” Mrs. Scott said this as she stared into space, as if she had some sort of regret, or blamed herself for the following events. I really felt her pain, and all I wanted to do was give her a hug.


She told me the story. Every tragic detail. From when she woke up to the smell of thick smoke and her room and all her possessions being engulfed by flames, to when she went to her son’s bedroom to find him, choking on the thick black smoke. She told me that her husband and son survived the fire, but not the night ahead in the hospital. “Poor Mrs. Scott” I thought to myself as she told me that she moved to California from her once home in Virginia, in hopes that she could overcome her loss.


Mrs. Scott was a poet, a true writer. When I was 16 she went on an expedition to Africa for inspiration on her next story. However, her plane crashed, and she died. I was devastated! I did not know this before, but Mrs. Scott and my ninth grade English teacher were best friends, and he sometimes helped her out with inspiration for her books.


At the age of eleven, i had no idea that Mrs. Scott wrote memoirs, and made scrapbooks of me, but ten years later, at the age of 21, now I know. One day I got a phone call from my ninth grade English teacher, Mr. Morris. He asked me if I could help him clear out his shed, which was filled with rows and rows of books. As I was clearing out one of the boxes, I bumped into one of the bookcases, and a book fell open on the floor. I picked it up and began to read the page it was open to. The story sounded very familiar, it sounded a lot like my first day of seventh grade, when I was mad at my friends. I flipped through more pages, and they all sounded like parts of my life, then I got to the page. This page had pictures of me from when i was six to the age of 13. I continued to read these stories for the next hour.

I asked Mr. Morris who had written these, and he said that it had been Mrs. Scott. He said that she had been writing these since I was five and that she wanted me to have them when she thought the time was right. He also told me that she thought of me as her own son, which really made me want to cry. Mr. Morris wanted me to keep them, and I have treasured them ever since.