Change (part I)
by Therese Plummer
No one asked her if it was ok. She was just told. and that is what sucked most about being ten years old.
She had no rights.
It blew on an epic scale.
After huffing and puffing inside and outside she started packing her stuffed animals reassuring each one that, “it would be ok.”
“I know brown bear but you will only be in the box for a few days and then we will be in our new home and i will make it cozy.”
She wasn’t sure she bought the lines she was feeding brown bear.
But she said them so he didn’t worry. He had a perma-worry look about him.
He stared back at her with the same expression he had her whole life.
In he went and in went her most treasured possessions. Books,bannana clips, cassette tapes, clothes and a poster of Ralph Maccio from The Karate Kid.
She ‘felt’ as if she was an adult and she was a double digit so why was she not brought into the decision to uproot and move away? Had anyone considered she was in the first relationship of her life with a boy who brought her his football Jersey on Friday’s to wear to school? Forget that he never washed it or ironed it! Had anyone thought about her best friend and cousin who she adored and would be so far away from now? There should have been a family meeting, a vote, this was not fair in any sense of justice!
As she sat in the backseat of her grandmother’s old car smelling a roasted chicken and scalloped potatoes in the trunk she stared out the rain soaked window.
It was her and her little sister who just slept and didn’t look like she had a worry about any of it. They were so different. Always had been.
She listened to the adults talking in the front seat. Her grandmother and Mother. She heard the angst and worry from her Mom and the soothing slow drawls from her Grandmother. And between the Southern drawl and roasted chicken smell the next thing she knew she had fallen asleep.
Dreaming of unknown things.
Dreaming of change.
Dreaming of a new world.
When she awoke it was to her sister pinching her upper arm (their joke) and she looked up at what was to be her new home,
and groaned.
