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Show The Raging Main We had lived on Swanee Lane for two years and in that time I had made two friends, one for each year, Lisa Gawen and Cathy Johnson. I remember little of our friendship except for the way we wore our hair: two braids pinned in buns just above our ears or looped into rings that swayed with every movement of our heads. They called me Jenny. Until fourth grade, we would write letters and exchange school pictures, and when my family returned to northern Virginia in 1983 for another tour of duty, I would discover that Lisa and Cathy were high school classmates of mine. They will have been friends since kindergarten. While this cannot be true, in my mind's eye I see Lisa standing in our driveway as we left for the West Coast, for Seattle and a nine-month tour of duty, waving to me in her orange shirt and matching shorts, struck by the novelty of a friend that moves. I, on the other hand, sit in the back seat of the car wedged between my brothers and cry for the first time at our leaving. I had become attached to the oaks with their mossy roots, the acorns that prattled against the ceiling, the yellow bus with Grandma at the wheel. You will like Seattle, my mother said, reaching her arm over the seat and trying to rub my knee. Don't worry. In a few months it will feel like home. Look at it this way, my father added, This is the fourth place you will have lived. Most kids would love to have seen so many places. You 're lucky. I didn't feel lucky though. I felt deeply tired. My effort to keep the world spinning had resulted in a collapse that seemed permanent. 87 |