Trip to Boston to visit Callie- Oct. 2008

Callie transferred to BU our junior year, and Casey and I planned to visit her in early October of 2008. I remember so much of this trip, so this may be a long entry…

I remember sitting on Casey’s bed booking our MegaBus tickets to Boston. We got to Penn Station early in the morning we were going, but Casey left her ticket at home so I looked up her confirmation number on my phone. She brought her green handbag with her on that trip. I had the window seat going up, and remember staring outside the window at Manhattan and the highway, all the way up through Connecticut to Massachusetts. Casey had one of my iPod headphones in her ear and I had the other, and her head on my shoulder, we both looked out the window at all the pretty fall leaves. We talked about how we miss seeing fall when we are in the city, and for a while we were both just quiet looking at how beautiful the leaves were.

As we were pulling into Boston, the song “Still Fly” by Big Tymers (a rapper) came on my iPod. Casey got so excited… “I love this song!” and made us listen to the whole thing. Now I think of her whenever it comes on my iPod. I saw somewhere else, on her Facebook, that she used to listen to this song a lot with some friends from home but I didn’t know that then.

We spent the weekend with Callie exploring Boston and pretending we were Callie’s “parents” visiting her, since it was parent weekend at BU. We took pictures in the Boston common, and we deemed that I was the male since I was taller than Casey. We decided one picture was our “engagement” picture, and the other was our “save the date.” It was so cold up there already, and Casey, Callie, and I would nestle together for body heat waiting for the bus to take us from Callie’s dorm to the main part of the city. On the bus, Casey took about 100 pictures of me, her, and Callie. I didn’t like how I looked so I started to close my eyes in them. She showed me her camera and said, “Brooke, stop! You look like a normal girl. You have pretty hair and pretty white teeth.” This comment has stood out to me because later that school year in April, I ran into Casey and her mom in the elevator at Fordham. One of the first things Dianne said to me then was “You have beautiful teeth! has anyone ever told you that?” and I said no at the time. But thinking back now, the only other person who did was Casey! Being observant must run in the family.

I recently went up to visit Callie again with Janine and Kelsey for Callie’s birthday. Every site I saw and place we went, I remembered vividly being there with Casey last year, which was the last time I was in Boston. I could see the bench by the harbor we sat together on and remembered our conversation, I remembered our dinner in a restaurant I passed by. As Callie and I waited in a long line for cannolis at a bake shop, I remember Casey being right there with us last year, trying to figure out why these MIT kids were dressed as Ghostbusters so early in October (it was around the 8th). But most of all, I thought of Casey on that long bus ride… and I felt Casey’s head on my shoulder as I looked at the changing fall leaves.

To view photos from Casey’s trip to Boston with Brooke to visit Callie click here. Or, read Callie’s memory from this trip, “Visit to BU – Fall 08′”.]