With numerous letters and e-mails, my cousin Sasha and I have kept our friendship alive. We’ve known each other since we were three. We said goodbye to each other when we were 11 and since then I’ve seen her only once. During these years, we only spoke once on the phone. Phone conversations don’t make much sense when you’re 1000 miles away. You can hear their voice, but you can’t tell how they feel because their voice is distant and unfamiliar. We learn about each other through our many letters. We send each other birthday and New Year’s cards. We say a lot in one letter, at least we try to. Although we’ve been apart so long, I think we know each other quite well. I know her secrets, her desires, her dreams, what she values, what she wants, and she knows that I know. Technology has allowed us to stay in touch. I see her tears and laughter when I read her letters, her smile and frown; she sees mine too. When I visited her four years ago, I thought we wouldn’t know each other, that we’d feel like strangers meeting for the first time, but I was wrong. Our relationship was stronger than before. I was half-American, new and changed, but she knew me. She recognized me; she saw and accepted the old and the new me. I knew her too, she’d changed, her voice, her tone and her thoughts were different. But she was everything I need, the perfect friend and sister.
Now we still e-mail each other to say ‘hi’ and ‘how are you’, and sometimes our sentences cover the whole page. We have kept the memories of our past together and we are still making new ones, even from far away.