Sophomore year of high school was the most challenging teen year, but not necessarily because of school. My physical appearance was a bit all over the place. On top of my head was a very unflattering shoulder-length cut, awkward layers poking out of the obstinately straight mess of dirty blonde.
My fashion was unfortunately much too bold. At least it was in hindsight. I hadn’t entirely adopted the “emo” culture, though I did let it have much too much influence over a few Hot Topic t-shirt mistakes. One of my favorite Hot Topic shirts was black with a huge fish-eye zoom on Johnny Depp’s Willy Wonka character. The big circular white sunglasses he sported disproportionally stretched across my middle half. I wore it with such pride, and remember it with much wiser distaste.
The hormonal attack on the body that is the hour-glass-shape hadn’t quite struck yet, leaving my curves a bit slimmer, though average for a fifteen-year-old girl. My green eyes were normally clouded with a thick layer of black eyeliner and mascara. My grandmother sweetly told me she thought it looked like I was wearing spiders on my eyes.
And, of course, the cherry on top: braces. No fashionably insecure fifteen-year-old is complete until they come with their own set of braces. I definitely fit that billing.
During this time, I lived with my mother in a standard suburban neighborhood, Silver Creek. It’s technically a part of Wesley Chapel, North Carolina, but Wesley Chapel isn’t big enough to have it’s own post office, so we were found under Waxhaw’s township.
It was the newest house we had ever lived in. My mother was just starting to come into her writing career. She finally managed to turn out a successful series called Saving Dinner, teaching the importance of eating well and eating in a community. She also had an online menu business that sent out a weekly schedule of menus and shopping lists for anyone that subscribed. She filled the need for women who couldn’t find time to organize dinner each weeknight while juggling family responsibilities and offered an affordable plan.
Everyday I would come into her office, a yearlong shelter of hibernation, and sit in the yellow and red plaid rocking chair in the left hand corner. She would sit on the edge of her black pleather swivel chair, trapped in a U-shaped white desk. Her face would hover about a foot away from the monitor’s screen. Reflections of Microsoft word, a gmail inbox, yahoo messenger, and facebook (a new feat), bounced off the lens of her dollar store reading glasses that slowly slid to rest atop her nostrils. Her over-processed blonde hair would be loosely tucked into a bun on the back of her head. Wisps of stubborn strands would often fall over her line of vision, each piece shone with burnt crispness to bleach exposure. The final touch would be a fleece blanket tucked around her middle and under her legs.
Pulling my legs up into the circle of my arms, I would watch. Swaying back and forth on the curved pine limbs of the chair until it would eventually hit against white baseboard. I’d squirm it forward, and repeat. For a reason unknown to me, I was drawn to being around her. Her office wasn’t really where we had in depth discussions or memorable life lessons. Actually it was rarely a source of conversation. My mother could multi-manage well in front of a computer screen, but she could hardly multi-task – especially during a deadline. It was a silent green room. Four green walls, even a green ceiling, where her green eyes would run across typed sentences and the green eyes she gave me would simply watch her.
But that was only one room of the house we now shared. It was beautiful. The whole downstairs was yellow except my mother’s office, bedroom, and the dining room. Those claimed green. Two large windows on the back of the house looked over an untouched field along the edge of our property’s line. Reinforcing our warm color choices with even more gold light. One of those windows was in our living room that leaked sunshine hues from every wall and had two apple red couches with a large white coffee table in the middle of the room. It was easy to find oneself in a voluntary slumber, submerged in a bath of vitamin D on those couches.
