Alone

I remember being with my grandma when I was eleven years old, nearly twelve. It had been a big year. My Aunt Jo bought me a bra for my birthday that year and unlike most little girls, who longed for that moment. I hated it.

We moved to a new house in the middle of sixth grade, which meant changing schools for the first time in my life. My mother told me I was getting too big to take baths with my brother and for the first time I began to feel very alone. Alone in the bathtub. Alone in the playroom where I decorated and redecorated an orange crate for my Barbie doll.

At night, when all my siblings were in bed, I sat on the floor while my mother sewed Barbie doll clothes for me. She made a wedding dress from white satin that was elegant and a pioneer dress from gingham that even had a bonnet. I played with the closet she made from a boot box. It had a place to hang all the clothes and even a dresser with drawers.

I had a friend I pretended to play with all the time that year. I guess I was pretty old for that, but it was so real that later in the year, when I was twelve, I thought I was pregnant by him. The only real time we had even spent together had been roller skating, but I thought I had been thinking about him so much that God thought we were married and had sent me a baby. I was so ashamed and terrified of what my mother would say.

But that time with my grandmother was when I knew that something had changed.

I was no longer little enough to think she was perfect. Now most of the things she did seemed foolish and embarrassing and I hated that. I wanted to go back to the way it was. I didn't want to grow up.

Growing up didn't seem to have any advantages as far as I could see. It was a messy uncomfortable process. I realized that everything changed. Everything could go away. Everyone could change or go away.

I felt very alone that year.