Timeline: Eleven

("One Through Six" can be read here. "Seven Through Eight" here. "Nine" here. And "Ten" here.)

1993, age eleven
Over spring break, we fly out to California to visit my dad, and even though we're not hungry he immediately takes us to IHOP from the airport. It's there he tells us my step-mom is six-months pregnant with our little brother or sister. It dawns on me, perhaps not right away but eventually, that she was pregnant the first time we met her—three months before—and we had no idea.

Over Memorial weekend my brother, Adam, is born. This same weekend, during a trip to Tulsa to visit my grandpa, grandma and uncles, I am involved in a freak, random accident. My uncle accidentally hits me in the eye with a baseball bat, in a batting cage at a putt-putt place. I spend a week in the hospital and undergo surgery to rebuild my eye socket. To this day, there is no visible scar, and that's the third miracle of the situation. The first: I didn't lose my eye. The second: I didn't lose my vision. I will always have a few plastic plates in place of my eye socket, and I usually lead with this at parties.

When I'm well enough to travel, I fly out to California for the rest of the summer, and I hold my baby brother for the first time in the San Francisco airport. I spend the summer days with my step-mom, sister and brother, watching "Loving" and eating Otter Pops. I'm terrified of starting middle school in the fall, and one day as I walk with my dad down the streets of San Francisco, I begin to cry because I'm not sure how to use a locker. He listens and tells me these things work themselves out.

Sometime over the summer, back in Texas, my mom moves us into the house I will live in until the day I pack up everything I own and move to college, the house my mother still lives in.

I start middle school (sixth grade), and I somehow learn to use my locker. I have horrible hair this year, but I just can't figure out how to curl it or maintain it, so I wear a lot of headbands. I ride the bus home from school everyday. One day, about a week after school starts, I reach the bus late and find all the empty seats are taken. I ask a girl who I am sure is a seventh grader if I can sit next to her. She smiles and says yes. It turns out she's actually my age and her name is Natalie and she doesn't know a soul at this school either. We become inseparable and I spend so much time sitting at her kitchen counter, her parents joke about charging me rent.

Fourteen years later, she will stand beside me on my wedding day. A year after that—this May, actually—I will stand beside her at her own.

Comments

[Jess]

I could not read that eye story all at once. I had to keep pausing to clutch at my own eyes and shudder. Aghhh. I'm glad it healed so miraculously without causing permanent damage.

[Raven]

I too am so glad there was no permanent damage on your eye! How crazy!

I would love to do a timeline thing but it's all so negative. I'm thinking maybe a random fact bulletin or something to avoid it.

[Someone Being Me]

That eye thing is crazy. Things like that freak me out as a mother. I'm glad you figured out the lockers. They were kind of scary.

[Jen]

I totally had a flinching moment with the bat story too. Yikes!

I didn't know how to use a locker until high school! For the first few weeks of school, I carried all of my textbooks around in my backpack because I was scared I wouldn't be able to open my locker. Instead I was just a big geek with a huge backpack.

[anne]

I just adore these. I want to do them just for myself to see what I remember, but I fear they won't be 1/2 as interesting.

[sarah]

aww that is so sweet how you and Natalie are still friends! What a great way to end the post! Very beautiful as always.

[Rhi]

Loving? Oh my gosh, I loved that show.

[bethany actually]

In 1993, I was graduating from high school and going to college and realizing that I needed to break up with my boyfriend of two years and that it was going to be messy. I was also living in a dorm with my best friend from high school, Erin, and having the time of my life.

I met Erin on my first day of 10th grade at a new high school, when she sat next to me in homeroom because our last names started with the same letter. Eighteen years later, last fall, I made her wedding cake.

[Rachel]

Wow! What beautiful memories! I met my best friend on the 1st day of 5th grade, and I know that she'll stand next to me on my wedding day! Crazy about your eye, but great that you have no scar!

[Natalie]

Love ya!

[Wickedly Scarlett]

Oh my God, I can't even imagine how awful your uncle must have felt!!!

[slynnro]

Dude! Loving! That was like my favorite show.

And I was terrified of locker usage as well. Sad really.

[Pickles & Dimes]

Oh, the eye story is awful. So glad there's a happy ending.

I wasn't afraid of using my locker, but I was terrified all the time that it had somehow become unlocked, and would check it repeatedly between classes. Those kids who "papered" their locks so they could just open their lockers without doing the combination? INSANE.

[Katie]

I can remember the anxiety I had over middle school too. I was scared to death that I wouldn't know how to use a combination lock. It's kind of nice to see how many others were also afraid of the locker usage!

[Camels & Chocolate]

Otter Pops! I had forgotten all about those!

Also, I wore out the headbands in middle school, too. Yet, I was still so excited when they came back two years ago.