I was thirteen

I remember being thirteen years old.  We had moved eight times by then, always trying to find a place where people with too much education, too little money and four kids, each with a medical problem that was expensive could live comfortably.

I played oboe, my fourth instrument, because in the process of moving we had lived in places that didn't have an orchestra or violin teacher.  I still played piano, but just for me, at home.

Pulled out of our big classes and stuffed into tiny ones where three of us worked on our own, writing papers, taking oral tests, and creating our own special little forms of havoc, I wanted, more than anything, to just be "normal." 

I dreamed of wearing plaid skirts and walking to school down streets lined with brick houses.  I wanted to sit anonymously in the back of a huge room filled with kids doing basic math and reading the same book.

I had holey soles and an atheist father and in true teenage fashion, I wanted Capezio shoes and St. Catherine was my hero.

Except my father was also my hero and he was lucky to put shoes on all of us at all.  Life was full of angst and contradictions.

It hasn't changed as much as I would like, but I don't take it quite as seriously as I once did.