Real Life Magic

A true story

Good evening, and welcome to Kindling.

This week I’ve been sentimental (it happens). Conversations with good friends around Thanksgiving and some writing buddies after has sent me back to the past. I go there often, fall into memory, relive it for a while. It’s the place where most of my stories come from.

Tonight, I bring you to my 6th grade year. I would have been eleven when I entered that painful world between childhood and adulthood. I don’t know if you ever feel it as keenly as then. Too young for most of the things that make you a bonafide citizen, but too old, even if only by a year, to enjoy toys and games in the same way as you used to. Most of the time, I’m glad to be past it. But sometimes a memory will creep up, and I’m filled with Bitter-Sweet.

Feel free to share your own coming of age memories in the comments. I always love to hear from all of you.

Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash

My first day of middle school, I rode the bus. It came to the same stop as my elementary driver did only a few months before at year’s end, but on that day, I entered another world when I climbed those steps. The eighth grade boys I remember best. They loomed over us all, always bouncing, in body and banter both. Slinging words and foul-mouthed insults at each other. Anyone who passed by was fair game too. No one made it out unscathed.

That bus and that year was the first time I got called flat-chested. It was followed by bitch. That boy didn’t even know my name. I can’t remember why he said it. Probably just to get noticed by the others. I don’t think it got a laugh. The year before, my best friend and I had been sneaking our baby dolls in backpacks to school and taking care of Tomagotchis at recess. Now, we were breast ratings and bitches.

It’s easy for me to remember those times when my heart went to my throat and stopped me from breathing. But that wasn’t all there was. This week I remembered meeting my first magical human. She wrote poetry and spoke softly, and when we went to choir I learned she could sing. She had an older sister who listened to indie music and wore nothing but grey. Her heart was like an open ocean in a place where you either chuckled or shut down. Crying wasn’t an option.

I remember a song she wrote for her baby brother, something wistful and kind. When I wrote after that, I did it with her in mind. A new possibility had been opened up before me. I could feel, and I could write about it.

See, it’s usually the famous writers that we point to and say, “Yeah, this guy made me want to write.” And it’s true. There are many famous writers who made me want to write. But I think I stumbled on the first person, the first one who was real to me, when I was still a child. She inspired me to be real and open, to bleed on the page. All that at the age of eleven.