The time capsule

“Twenty steps forward from door and thirty steps toward woods. Under the pile of rocks,” Krissy recited from the notebook paper in her hand.

Hmmm, how many Ava-size steps today to equal the twenty steps of 13-year old Ava? How significantly could her shoe size have changed in 17 years? She’d always had big feet, for a girl. Could they have been size 10’s as a young teenager? Maybe. Probably.

“One, two, three, four…” Ava started counting.

Once she hit twenty, she turned to her right and started counting steps toward the woods. Krissy was following by her side, both of them feeling somewhat awkward and silly.

“Thirty!” Ava exclaimed, “Now where are those rocks?”

Ava and Krissy bent down to brush away the dirt and pine needles in search of a noteworthy pile of rocks.

The cousins were just girls when they came upon this master plan to bury their very own time capsule in Krissy’s Cape house backyard. Ava’s middle school 8^th grade class had just recently been given back their own time capsules that they’d buried at the end of elementary school. In Ava’s shoebox, or “time capsule” as she and the school had called it, was a letter she had written to her future self, an unopened letter from her 3^rd grade best friend, Kate, a list of some of her favorite things, and several at-the-time significant photos she’d decided to include.

Ava remembered the awkward feeling when going through these items, especially when reading the letter from Kate. Shortly after 3^rd grade, she and Kate had a falling out of the sort that happens to 9-year old girls. She couldn’t recall anything specific or shocking happening; they were just in a time period where your best friend status was dependent on who you shared a classroom with, and Kate and Ava had been assigned different 4^th grade teachers. A best friendship is kind of hard to maintain when you never see said best friend.

But back to the letter from Kate. It was filled with references to their supposed shared crush whom they called “the knight in shining armor” for whatever reason, along with countless inside jokes that Ava could also not for the life of her comprehend a mere four years later.

Later on, in the same week they had gotten their time capsules back, Ava ran into Kate in the school hallway and they both stopped and asked each other simultaneously if one another’s letter had made any sense at all? Shaking their heads no, they both laughed and that was that, the final chapter to their friendship.

Thinking back on that memory now, at age 30, Ava suddenly realized after all of these years who their “knight in shining armor” had been. Alex Knight, of course! Alex was a fellow classmate from kindergarten through 12^th grade, and somehow the obvious link had escaped Ava, and quite possibly Kate as well, for the past 17 years. If she ever saw Kate again, at say their next high school reunion, she’d surely have to bring up the answer to their time capsule riddle. Or not; it might be too awkward. She wouldn’t want Kate thinking she herself had been devoting all of these years to solving this mystery. After all, she and Kate had hardly spoken more than a few small-talk sentences since then.

But somehow the awkwardness and anticipation of opening that time capsule in 8^th grade had provided just the right kind of inspiration for Ava and Krissy to make it their very mission that following summer to create one of their own. They decided the timing couldn’t be more perfect. They were both starting high school in the fall and it felt like the perfect time to memorialize their hopes and dreams for the future. Thinking that opening their time capsule at the end of high school would be too short of a time, they settled on opening at age 30, a milestone age that had seemed so far away at the time and was now, in all of its imperfection, here.

So, here they were, two grown adults standing together in Krissy’s backyard on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend, right on the cusp of summer. The backyard was one they’d spent countless summers playing in together and barbecuing with their families. Wiffleball, hide-and-seek, and tag were some of their favorite games to play with their other cousins, siblings and neighborhood friends.

One particular game of wiffleball that had since become a legend in the Greenfield family history immediately came to mind for Ava when she’d set foot in the backyard a few minutes earlier and caught sight of the hanging clothesline. They’d had a pretty intense game of ball going on, when one of her crazy uncles, Uncle Scott, decided to institute a new rule into the game: the next person to hit the purple towel hanging on the clothesline, specifically Barney the purple dinosaur’s yellow shorts, automatically won the game for his or her team. Well, wouldn’t you know Krissy’s dad, Uncle Skip, was up to bat next and he nailed Barney’s yellow shorts on the very first pitch! Everyone went totally nuts in celebration, everyone, that is, except for Ava’s younger cousin Brett. Brett, you see, was what you’d call very competitive and from his perspective on the losing team, this rule was “totally unfair” and brought on an uncontrollable fit of tears. Legend would have you believe he cried the night away, though Ava was sure it had only actually been a few minutes.

Ava smiled at the remembrance. Times were different now, but those memories would stay with her forever.

“Gotta love the Greenfield family penchant for yards of mulch and not grass,” Krissy remarked as they continued brushing aside the dirt in her family’s backyard, still in search of their long-buried treasure.

They both laughed.

Of all the Greenfield family houses in their Cape neighborhood, every single one used an unconventional means of covering their land: mulch. It did make a bit of sense, they considered. They only came to the Cape in the summertime and grass or any other type of lawn – was there even another type of lawn you could have? – was simply too unreasonable to maintain from afar. Mulch was practical and perpetual. Of course there were many other homes in the neighborhood comprised of summer people that did in fact have grass yards that looked reasonably nice, but that was “their yard, and not ours” Ava recalled her father telling her too many times.

Back in the day of the time capsule burial, 17 years ago, it was completely normal for Ava and Krissy’s families to be residing in their Cape homes from Memorial Day through Labor Day. Of course the dads themselves were more mainstays down the Cape on the weekends versus weekdays as they weren’t lucky enough to have the summers off like the moms and kids.

For Ava and Krissy, those summers spent on the Cape defined their childhood. So many firsts came to Ava’s mind – first time riding a bike without training wheels, first time going underwater without holding her nose, first bee sting, first kiss, first boyfriend, first beer… the list went on and on.

Born just two days apart, Ava and Krissy’s friendship was sealed the moment their moms announced they were expecting. When they weren’t down the Cape each summer or visiting each other’s homes, they were obsessively writing each other pen pal letters.

“What Nancy Drew book are you on?” Ava, who was enraptured in reading her mom’s original, hardcover Nancy Drew mystery books, would always ask Krissy.

“Case number 78” Krissy might have replied, followed by “Have you started reading The Babysitter’s Club yet??” Krissy was always trying to get Ava to try out the series. Ava, however, had no interest in babysitting and miraculously made it through her entire teenage years without a single babysitting gig.

When AOL first came onto the market, Krissy was the first to write to Ava about it. They would plan specific dates and times to go online and rapid-fire email each other back and forth. It was like pen pal letters on turbo mode, and they couldn’t get enough. Once they discovered AOL Instant Messaging, or “AIM”, all bets were off; they were full-blown addicted. Ava will never forget the first phone bill her parents received after their introduction to AOL. Her home line immediately switched to a long-distance calling plan as there wasn’t yet a local number to dial-up to the internet with. Thankfully, her parents understood the importance of the internet at such an early stage.

Both Ava and Krissy maintain to this day they were there for the advent of the internet. Of course the internet was invented quite some time before they were born, but they certainly were early adopters to the AOL phenomenon that was email, chat rooms and instant messaging.

“Think I found something here!” Krissy said, bringing Ava back from her trip down memory lane.

Ava scooted over to peek down into the hole Krissy had dug out with her mom’s gardening shovel. Sure enough, she spotted the top of a Folgers coffee can lid, their clever and clearly sustainable take on the shoebox time capsule idea.

“Oh my god, gross!!” shrieked Ava.

The dirt around the can was swarming with earthworms and other unidentifiable crawly creatures.

Fortunately Krissy was more of one with nature and she yanked the can out of the ground and started vigorously shaking it off.

A few moments later, once the yuck and awe factors from the discovery had subsided a bit, the girls decided to take their can inside Krissy’s house for the big reveal of the inner contents.

Ava was suddenly sick to her stomach. Sure, she had previously thought about the contents of the can, and even considerably more so in the past few days. She worried that she and Krissy would have reactions similar to her and Kate back in the 4^th grade. After all, they had not maintained a strong friendship during their twenties and this archeological mission had felt strange and somewhat forced from the very moment Krissy brought it up at their family Christmas party the previous December. It was like the girls had been brought together today in Krissy’s background to simply fulfill an obligation they had made to their 13-year old selves. At least that’s how Ava felt.

“Man, we really packed this thing well,” said Krissy as she removed a gallon-size freezer bag.

It was not just one freezer bag, but a freezer bag inside of a freezer bag insider of another freezer bag.

“A missed calling as time capsule preservationists perhaps?” Ava mused.

Krissy gave her an appeasing chuckle and Ava laughed along with her.

OK, finally down to the bag inside of the bags inside of the can. Krissy dumped the contents onto her kitchen counter.

Similar to the format of Ava’s shoebox, the Folgers coffee can contained photos, letters to each other, letters to themselves, letters from their parents and something somewhat unidentifiable.

Krissy started separating the items into two piles, using the unrecognizable mystery object as a barrier between her pile and Ava’s.

Ava spotted her letter to herself, addressed in the large, curly-cue handwriting of her youth.

Dear Future Me,

How is 2017? Am I still alive?? I hope so! Is Krissy still my best friend? If not, it might be kinda awkward opening this thing up together, huh?? HA HA HA HA I kid, kid.

[Oh jeeze, year 2000 Ava had a 6^th sense!]

Do I still have blonde hair or did it naturally darken like mom always said it would?? Or did I dye it? Remember I told Sue at Golden Scissors that I bought some brunette hair dye from CVS and she totally lost it on me? Like, she FORBID me to use it! Is the fear of Sue still with me?? LOL

Do I still play with Vicki and Deirdre and the neighborhood gang? Can I still outrun them in tag?

Do Chris and I still tattle on each other?

Hmmm, what’s important that I should be telling myself here?!

I wonder what kind of cool job I have. Did I become a famous chef yet? And / or do I have a column in the New York Times? Did I join the crew team in college like Ned Nickerson?

[Ava cracks up; she actually did row on the crew team and had forgotten it transpired from her love of Nancy Drew’s fictional boyfriend, Ned Nickerson!]

Who did I bring to prom? Was it Dan Lewis? I wonder if he stayed as cute in high school as he was in middle school. :) :) :)

Am I like a totally different person 17 years from now? Do I still go online all the time? Teen chat? Probably not allowed when I’m 30! Holy crap – I can’t believe how old I’ll be when I open this. I guess I’ll write down a bunch of things I like doing and my future self can compare with reality…

I LOVE Reese’s peanut butter cups – my favorite candy of all time.

The pond is my favorite place to be. I go swimming every day and last week I even swam across the entire pond!! (Mom was in the rowboat next to me the whole time in case I started to drown…. I didn’t!)

I am really fast. Not to toot my own horn or anything, but I can beat anyone – even boys! I’m going to run track next year and win every race!

I have read every single Nancy Drew book and now I’m reading The Hardy Boys. I love the stories and the mysteries! I started writing my own book, but I can’t tell you what it’s about here because I don’t want anyone to dig up this time capsule before us and steal my idea! Duh!

My friends are my life!! Krissy is my best friend 4ever – I can’t imagine getting older without her.

I am obsessed with Cape boys. I hope I marry one with shaggy blonde surfer hair and live here forever!

Welp, we’re getting called for dinner – pizza night!! Gotta go… c-ya in 17 years! MUAH!

XOXOXO,

Me

As if she wasn’t already feeling sick to her stomach, Ava was suddenly filled with a sense of despair. The letter had been too much and she knew one line that would haunt her sleep that night: Am I like a totally different person 17 years from now?