Kristina and I met in Los Angeles at the
time of the internet boom. We worked in a cramped office in Beverly Hills, where after 5
pm cockroaches flew by you like bombers. One
of the first times we spoke was because I was dodging a mammoth flying
cockroach. She laughed at my horror. Ducking under the flying cockroaches,
we became friends quickly.
LA was a different world, and it was refreshing to have a friend
like Kristina- honest, smart and witty. She seemed as though she knew who
she was and stuck to it. A rare quality in any state and time, but in LA in our
20s, it was just plain unique. I even
know the moment it hit me. She was telling me about herself, with plain
honestly and no drama. I looked for the fakeness, but it wasn’t there. As
time went on, when she smiled or said something complimentary, you knew she
believed it, as she wouldn’t say it if not. And when her sarcastic humor started going, then the fun would begin! While in LA, Kristina had a diverse group
of friends, and not too long after we met, this guy Mark that she excitedly chatted about, became a
permanent fixture.
We both left LA and a few years after, she wrote me a letter and sent it to my mother to reconnect. This started a cherished penpal
relationship. We shared a love for language and treated our emails like letters. I know that she had some trouble with language at times, as Mark points out in the funny post about the shopping list, but her humor and wit never was hard to find. My
letters from Kris always excited me, it was like listening to her chat on
for a short while and I felt lucky to have them. Like her conversation, her letters were clever and fun at times, or slightly dark and
sarcastic.
Often she would wryly comment on an author, show, or person. This was fun to me, so I would ask her
questions to see how she would respond. I leave you with one of these comments. I had asked Kristina which literary giant she would would hang out with- Hemingway or Fitzgerald: She answered directly- “First of all, I absolutely have a choice:
Fitzgerald. No question. I get tired as hell of Hemingway's crap.”
Ha! That answer is SO Kristina. gave me a good chuckle..
love, Melissa
