• Eating: Pizza & Pellegrino
• Listening to: Peter Bjorn & John
• Wearing: Lace, leather & tweed. Maybe you’ll see photos from the day here soon!

Hello, cheri! Today, I’d just like to share a little something I wrote yesterday afternoon (in between storm sirens, but more on that later) in my publication design class. My professor asked us each to write a one-page biography on the spot, which we then had to format into a well-designed pamphlet of sorts. Though she said she wasn’t grading for content, the experience was both overwhelming & therapeutic. As you’ll see, I got nearly to the bottom of the page before I’d become a teenager, so the ending is kind of abrupt. Although, of course, if I were to seriously sit down to write about my life it would be far different from this, it’s interesting to see which pieces of my past first popped into my head that afternoon. Anyway, hope it’s not too dull for you dears!

…………………………………………………………………………………………

I was born in a town north of Charleston, twenty-something years ago. My first memories were formed in bunk-beds and over books. My mom would make my brother and me take time out for “R&R” –– reading & resting –– so from an early age I began nursing a love for literature, even if it was just the Berenstain Bears.

I grew up in one of the smallest houses you ever have seen. Of course, at the time I had no reason to think so –– in fact, it was just my size. My room was filled end-to-end with a four-poster bed I had to get a running start to bounce up on. Above it was a frilly pink quilt, underneath, monsters. Which is why I ended up on the top bunk of my brother’s bed most nights, eyes wide & shining in the light of his glow-in-the-dark solar system. We’d listen to Carmen and chat until our our eyes rolled back.

“Are you still awake?”

…………………………………………………………………………………………

My dad has a garden, just in front & to the left of the place we now call home. It’s long & thin, starting small & ending with tall rows of sunflowers & corn. The carefully tilled rows mark the length of our old, paper-doll house. The okra, my pink-painted room.

Dad went back to school shortly after I was born. He started off slow, working & taking classes at night. He tells me now he’d study until long after dark, then wake up before the sun to head off to the harbor & into the depths of submarines & ships. Eventually, he quit work & went to school full-time. They downsized everything & moved us into our miniature country abode, on a marshy plot of land 20 miles south of town & 10 1/2 acres wide. My mom got a job when my brother reached 1st grade. I went to friends’ houses during the day for a time spent somewhere in between play dates & pre-school.

In January I went to visit one of those friends at college in Columbia. We hold true to our pinkie promises of best friendship forever, even if that’s evolved into the occasional phone call or lunch date when we’re in the same city. Everything is different now. My dad owns his own business –– has since he graduated two years after his return to school. My mom came back home & we moved across the yard into our two-story, porch-clad dwelling when I was 10. Now she works part-time for my dad, part-time on their makeshift farm.

I always joke they replaced me with chickens when I went off to college –– but it’s sort of true. A small coop now sits beneath the oaks behind the house, across from the pond. The refrigerator is always brimming with fresh, brown eggs. This spring, they’re wanting to get pigs.

As for me, I’m simply getting by, living life in what a wise woman once deemed limbo:  no longer a part of the home I once knew & not yet master of my own.

…………………………………………………………………………………………

{photos from Columbia, where I visited Miss Jamie, my childhood friend, at school}