life in this town (part two)

This is part two of a three-part story. Please click here to read part one first.

We returned to this town every month or so for years, checking on the cabin which sat empty, joining in the town’s festivities now and then. We returned to stay when I was eleven, five years after we had moved away. I had grown from a small second grader to an awkward seventh grader. It was different. My mom had married into an old family of the area, one of the families that had first settled here, and after a lifetime of few relatives, I was related by marriage to many in the community. We were a part of things. I had a bedroom of my own and a real bed for the first time in my life. But I was awkward; having skipped kindergarten and having started first grade a few months after turning five years old, I now found that the average age gap of a year and a half between myself and the peers in my grade now made a difference. There is a big gap between eleven and thirteen. And when I finally reached the longed-for thirteen and began high school, my friends were now fifteen and driving; when I finally reached fifteen, they were all seventeen. Rare were the times when I felt that I fit in.

The other middle-schoolers remembered me when I moved back, and so in a way I was accepted. But I lived fifteen miles from town, and the majority of that trip was on an unpaved county road. My mom and step-dad soon had a baby, and then another one, and entering into the regular social stuff of high school was limited. My relationship with my mother became strained, tense, and volatile. I spent close to two hours every day on a school bus. I journeyed through my teenage years with painful self-awareness and heightened sensitivity. I spent my free time taking care of my little brothers.

This town became a place of excitement. Going to town was a big deal, and I was sensitive to my every action, learning well how small a place really is when you are so concerned about your image and nobody seems to forget a mistake. I wasn’t allowed to play sports, as we lived too far out of town and my mother decided I was too young to ride with other teenagers. Being too young affected everything.

And now being in the town where I went through high school is weird. We drive past the high school often. I go to community events and see my old principal and teachers and the parents of the girls who used to be my friends. Every part of this place is familiar. I rode in Homecoming parades down Main Street, emblazoned with Lumberjack pride. I performed on the few stages in this town as a Junior Miss contestant and in plays. I jumped off that trestle and toilet-papered somebody’s car over there. I got drunk here, puked there, passed out in that other spot. I went four-wheeling in these hills and went hunting on that land.

I see people who I went to high school with. Some were friends, others were not. Some are friendly, others snub me, or perhaps I think they snub me when really they just feel awkward like I do. Yesterday I was at my brother’s soccer game, my brother who was four when I would drag him to high school basketball games, my brother who is now a sophomore and making his own memories. My mom was there, and she pointed out to me a girl who I do not remember but who got the bus at the same stop as me when I was five years old. She proceeded to update me on the girl’s life since then. Such is life in this town, and particularly with my mother, who does not forget people or understand why I would not want to know all the knowable details about other peoples’ lives.

I see teenagers participating in all the clubs and activities of the high school, see their achievements written up in the paper. I did all these things too. I was in every club, went to every camp, filled my resume and college application with every possible activity that was not sports-related. Key Club, Business Professionals of America, 4-H, Idaho Business Week, Idaho Drug-Free Youth, I did them all. I was the National Merit Scholar, and the adults were proud of me because of it, and others in the community who had read about me on the front page of the local paper told me that they were proud of me too. I had opportunities before me and intended to pursue them and leave forever.

But my thirst for achievements faded when I began to drink deeply from the Living Water, when Jesus found me a year and a half before high school ended. That may have been when the real awkwardness began, when my old life began to rub uncomfortably against my new one. I lost friends, joined youth group, gained new ones. The Keith chapter began then too, and the last year of high school and the summer following it gained more memories. Floating lazily down the river, going to dances, going to prom, preparing for graduation. Our first “define the relationship” talk in that place, our first kiss in this place, talking about marriage in the little park where we now picnic with our children.

Please click here to read part three.