I didn’t expect to live there long. We never stayed in one place. Maybe a year at the most, and so I remained unsettled. Not in a bad way so much, more like a hummingbird moves from petal to petal, finding nectar in each color, yet keeping in flight, ready to dispatch itself any minute.
Each year, a new school; sometimes two or three, and so on. Neighbors to meet, musty basements in which to watch Bozo’s Circus with another girl my age, or eating sandwiches at the same yellow and chipped linoleum table, made unexpected in a different kitchen. Although the same.
It was there at the table I wrote my first story, The Ball I called it, a cheap rip-off of Cinderella, but I remember using “anxiously” in a sentence and my mom proudly showing the lined paper bound by a purple construction paper cover to Sister Laura, my newest first grade teacher. I still have that book. And each time I drag it out of the closet under the stairs I am back on an Elk Grove Village sidewalk, winding my favorite Lemon Twist toy around my ankle, daydreaming or maybe worrying about what other street we’d both be on next year.
Oh, yes. I moved too, as a kid. That’s always such a funny, awkward thing, starting a new school, meeting new kids, learning a new neighborhood. Sounds like you moved a little more frequently than we did, but it’s always hard for a kid.
I never had a lemon twist, though!! It looks like something I’d have thrown at my brothers.
My friend had a lemon twist, I never did. But I had an insatiable need to write, to reinvent myself time after time, to hide indoors and read books that were, technically, way over my head. My parents would force me outdoors, where I’d run and play and turn brown as a fairly well done chocolate chip cookie (with the chips inside, of course). I had friends. I just liked my pretend ones better sometimes. By the time we moved to California, which was our third home and I was only seven, I was already too entrenched in my own little world to care about making new friends all the time.
Eventually, I did stop spending so much time by myself, but I never really did give up the desire to write, to keep to myself (I was just sneaky about it), and I kept people at a distance.
Sheesh, if you just didn’t unleash a whole lotta remember whenning with this post!
How does this make you feel about moving your own kids? I only switched school 4 times in elementary school and my kids have never moved–same house their whole lives.
My daughter, Kelly, is a lot like you. She is a creative, interesting writer, and she has been doing it since she was a young child.
I bet all that moving from place to place was very hard on you. Much more bitter than sweet. But it is part of what made you who you are, and as far as I’m concerned, you’re great!