Memoirous

12 th Grade I remember walking up to the photography studio the end of August. This is it, the beginning of the end. The start of my senior year. What was I supposed to feel? I wished someone would tell me. I also wish someone had told me not to wear that blouse. Sheesh! Now, decades later, I ask myself—couldn’t I have found something more interesting? I had no idea how important a final picture would be, that this might be the one to define me. I must have thought it would be like anything else. The humidity that morning was thick. With thin hair such as mine, it was hard to give it body, a soul, The heavy air acted like gravity and weighted it down. I had a hard time getting my bangs to appear effortlessly flyaway without falling flat into my eyes. My whole last year in high school I was continually disappointed by how boring and complacent my life was in what should have been a monumental time. I was always expecting more. Bob Staley took me to my first and ...

8 th Grade No pic 9 th Grade No pic 10 th Grade No pic 11 th Grade A junior in high school. This was the best time of my school career. I had a set, a circle of friends I hung out with and went over to their house in the evening and on weekends. I drove a Volkswagen “Bug” that during the day looked red, but under street lamps at night appeared orange. I was always losing it in the mall parking lot. My friend Jane and I drove everywhere. We’d spent a summer at a Young Life youth camp in Pittsburgh and met other kids like us, only a year older. We’d drive up to Canton or Mount Vernon or wherever to visit them. Youth group was a huge part of my life. One night a group of friends spontaneously baptized me in a culvert creek that dribbled behind the house. It was nothing for me to run miles or bike to another state—for fun. Eleventh grade was uncomplicated. I wasn’t worried about college or thinking ahead to graduation. I was part of the Quill Club—qui...

7 th Grade The back of the picture says “Janie, 13 yrs old.” Yet I look twelve or younger. Certainly nothing like a thirteen year old today. I’d lost weight, so likely was not wearing chubby girl clothes. In 6 th grade I’d discovered running—a solitary sport. It started innocently enough (it might have been a punishment) the Phys Ed teacher sent the class consisting of 6 – 8 th graders on a one-mile run. We left the school and wound through back streets. Again, no one would be allowed to do this today without a drone or security camera following. I remember passing 8 th grade boys who looked like men until finally there was no one ahead of me. I remember thinking: This is crazy; I can’t be this good. I expected to die of exhaustion. But I kept going and ran back into the front parking lot of the school. If middle school is hell then 7 th grade was the absolute inner ring. I suddenly had no friends. They were too busy having sex or illicitly drinking or smoking or doing...

6 th grade I look into the frame of this picture. I’m wearing a dress. In elementary school the best I could do was shorts under my dress. There were so many times while on the jungle gym on the playground that I would realize I’d forgotten to put on shorts and that boys could look up and see my underpants. I always had to remember before swinging on the monkey bars, and tuck the hem of my dress into my shorts so that while hanging upside down my stomach didn’t show. It wouldn’t be until middle school that we were allowed to wear slacks, dress pants. Though certain girls wore jeans. Hithergreen Middle School was a whole other animal compared to elementary school. I attended an open school, meaning there were no classroom walls. We’d meet in pods to go over lessons. Sixth, seventh, and eighth grades fuzzily blended together. There weren’t textbooks per se, but packets that we worked on at our own pace. I was a self-motivated learner and was allowed to explore subjects a...

5 th Grade I lied. I do remember my 5 th grade teacher’s name. Mrs. Medillo. She said in my school year book that I was her “busy bee reader.” I kept track of all the books I read on index cards. I had a stack of them. I didn’t know how to score the books I read more than once. It seemed a miracle that because of redistricting I was able to spend 5 th grade back at my old school Driscoll, except by this time my friends had moved on. We were different on a scale that only a tween would understand. I was desperate to read a friend, a book that loved me for who I was—somewhat nerdy, existential, an optimistic fatalist. Little Women. I could actually see Jo staring into the depth of her grief when she opened Beth’s hope chest, where the mementos of her short life were stored. Even today, my throat catches every time I read this passage. I am Jo, the writer, smudging the outside of my finger as my hand rushes over fresh ink on the page. Secretly I nurture a secret po...

4 th Grade We moved in the middle of 3 rd grade, from one neighborhood to another. Yet it necessitated a switch from Driscoll Elementary to Stingley. At recess I was an outcast. There was a sign, a symbol really, by a door that we never used. I must have asked someone and they said it was a bomb shelter. What? At Stingley I decided to read every book on the shelves in the school library. I got through the Ds. I stumble upon an old-fashion book by Nancy Barnes titled The Wonderful Year about a girl much like myself whose heart breaks when her family has to move. She also rode a bike. I read the book through once, twice, three times. I remember telling my mother about it. Here was my story, told in fiction, about another girl in another time, yet it was also about me. In my school picture I flash a cheesy grin. I took the photographer literally when he demanded that I smile. Pinned to my jumper was a seal with a marble-size fake pearl for a body. I still have this pin...

3 rd Grade No one bothered to straighten my bow. Peter Pan collars were very popular growing up. Later I would gravitate toward angular, heavily ironed collars. In high school I’d sew my own clothes. But for now I was stuck with whatever my mother picked out for me. One time she took me shopping at Elder-Beerman’s where I was forced to browse the chubby girl section. It took a while, but eventually I would attempt to assert some autonomy over my clothes choices. Mostly I wore hand-me-downs from my sister Nancy who was only one year older. Case in point:   Though I was a slow reader, books became very important to me. My teacher (I cannot remember a single teacher’s name) read Charlotte’s Web to the class. I can still hear the sing-song back-and-forth lyricism in her voice as she read the scene of the kids on the tire swing in the barn. I was confused by the ending because up to that point no one had ever died in a book I’d read. Also I thought the title should...

2 nd Grade Same bob haircut. My teeth are like boxy appendages stuck into rubbery pink gums. It will take years for me to grow into my new teeth. My parents did not believe in braces. Orthodontics was for rich kids, or for the most serious cases. I would come home from school and change into play clothes. It was possible to climb a windbreak of hedge apple trees separating our backyard from an undeveloped field. Starting at one end, I could go from one tree to the next without touching the ground. I’d carefully navigate the branches, trying to avoid inch-long thorns, slowly making my way through the canopy. Sometimes I’d just sit in the crook of a tree and make up stories inside my head. I was largely left alone by my older brothers and sister. I knew it was dinnertime when the sky began to darken.

1 st Grade Hard to believe how short my bangs are in this picture. I might have tried to cut them myself and then a hairdresser had to even them out. I remember telling my Dad I had a loose tooth, and he tied a piece of string around it and the other end around a door knob. Then slammed the door shut. I screamed seeing the bloody stump of my tooth dangling at the end of the string. My brothers and sister were like planets orbiting around me—or perhaps I was a satellite circling my family. None of us seemed to fit together. A picture I hold in my head is sitting in front of our console black and white TV, a newspaper spread before me and my sister Nancy, eating popcorn before bed. I remember one night the show was very boring. A man was taking numbers out of a capsule inside a tumbler. I came to understand that if unlucky my older brother would have to go away to a place called Vietnam. I also came to understand that no one knew what was going to happen—not even the adults.

Kindergarten My mother cut my bangs and set my hair in pigtails all askew. She suffered from depression and would go to the hospital for “treatment.” During summers a neighbor lady would watch me so Mom could rest. I was often left alone. I remember exploring the woods behind our house on Princewood Avenue. One time, pretending to be an Indian, I stealthily stalked a man walking ahead of me. When I think about this now—I cannot blame my mother for being so anxious. I’d return home late for dinner with muddy shoes. Funny—no one would ask me where I’d been all day.