Ohhhhh this one hurts the heart a little bit.

Leah is my oldest friend.  Our mother’s met in Canandaigua and became fast friends.  They bonded over being transplants to the area from Niagara Falls, where they both attended the same small all girls Catholic school and randomly ended up living less than a mile apart.  Leah and I were born just a few weeks apart and every early memory that I have involves Leah and her family.  I spent so much time at their house playing with those big colored Melissa and Doug cardboard blocks in their addition (which I still refer to it as even though it’s been an addition for over 30 years at this point).  We listened to Wizard of Oz records and put on shows and renaissance festivals that we created for our parents.  We at family dinners around their kitchen table and snuck fruit leathers out of their pantry.  We would sneak into her sister, Bethany’s room, through their adjoining closet and would play with her little sister, Jessica, who will always be a baby in my mind.  And her neighborhood…it was the absolute best.  Full of kids and families who were all so nice.  We’d have nightly games of ghost in the graveyard throughout the entire neighborhood after dark and would run in the street, which never got busy.  When Leah called me up to tell me that the house was sold, and her parents were moving to Baltimore to be closer to her and her sisters, my heart hurt.  Canandaigua won’t be the same without the Cochols.

People are sometimes surprised to hear that I was painfully shy when I was little.  I wouldn’t go to dance class unless Leah was there, and I always wanted to be her partner, and Leah always let me.  She would hold my hand and skip back and forth across Miss Bernie’s black and white dance floor with me, even though she had so many other friends to partner up with.  And when I transferred schools from my teeny little catholic school class of 9 to the public middle school with a class of 300+, Leah looked out for me.  She was the popular girl and had no need to watch out for the new nerdy private school girl with big plastic framed glasses, but she did.  These small acts that Leah probably doesn’t even remember are always held in my heart when I think back on our friendship.  And still to this day, even though we don’t see one another often, we can always pick up where we left off.  She’s my first and my forever friend.  All the Cochols are.

I popped over to say my goodbyes to Scotland Road last Wednesday, the day they were saying their final goodbyes, and it was like a walk on memory lane.  A very sad, very emotional walk that I was glad I got to do with Leah and the entire Cochol clan.

No matter when you visited, there was always a non-Cochol at their home, so it was appropriate that Jessica’s goddaughter was there for the shoot.


You may be far, but always close in my heart (that sounds cheesy, right?  But it’s soooo true.)

See you all again soon!  Thanks for the memories, Scotland Road!