Making Lemonade

[Christina (Smieja) Pennell]

Stephanie and I have been friends since Kindergarten. One of the things that I remember most about Stephanie was that she was always able to take a "not so good" situation and make the most of it. I always hated riding the bus home. There were no "cool people" on my bus, so Stephanie and I used to write notes to each other throughout the day to read on the bus on the way home. This was of course a tricky thing to do because at St. Mary's we only had about 12 people in our class and it wasn't easy to get away with writing notes or exchanging notes without everyone seeing you and getting upset! She was always doing things to make me smile and make me realize that things weren't as bad as they seemed. One time when we were about 13 years old, we did something that wasn't so nice. I won't repeat the offense here...only Stephanie knows what I'm talking about. ;) Anyway, I got grounded for the 1st and only time in my life. I was so bummed. It was summer and I wanted to be riding my bike to Steph's house like I did almost every day. Instead, I was stuck at home doing chores! We couldn't even talk on the phone. It was torture!!! So, on about the 3rd day of my sentence, I got a letter in the mail from Stephanie. I was so excited. I opened it up and inside I found something called, "The Saga." Stephanie wrote me a note that said we were going to make the most of this time and write this funny story together. The story was about an adventure that we took together and the characters that we encountered along the way, most of whom were based on characters from our real life. I laughed until I cried. (I recall something about paddling a canoe in the desert and purple bells...maybe you had to be there.) Then, I wrote back and continued the story. This continued for a long time and we kept that story and sent it back and forth when one or the other was going through a rough time. She turned that one "grounded" week in my life into one of my favorite memories. She was always able to take the lemons and make lemonade and I think that's a lesson that we've all learned from her. Thanks Steph!