The night before I moved to Chicago, we spent the night at my grandmother’s house. I was young, so the idea of moving wasn’t too scary, but all I could remember, as I cut star shapes out of our homemade Jell-O, was that I was angry. I was angry because I liked Christmas at Grandma’s house, and ‘Free Fridays’ at my elementary school, and the pool in our backyard. Now Grandma’s house would be far away, I would be going to a whole new school, and you weren’t allowed to have pools in Chicago because Dad said it doesn’t get hot enough. Nonetheless, I carved my Jell-O for the last time, masking my 7-year-old anger by sneaking stars into my mouth any time grandma would look away. And then my mom walked into the kitchen where I stood on a step stool with a blue stained tongue, with tears running down her face.
“What is it? What happened?” My grandma asked her as she walked around the kitchen counter. My mom lowered herself onto the couch in the living room and rested her head in her hands.
“The moving van got broken into,” This was my first ever experience with real, genuine change, and not a single part of it was positive-- except for the blue Jell-O stars.
There are 3 things I can distinctly remember from my first day in that new house-- the bulky TV set up on the living room floor, the Razor scooter with the hot pink wheels that I rode around the empty garage, and the wasp nest in the swing set. Mom and Dad set our mattresses up in front of the TV on the living room floor because we didn’t have beds or box springs or headboards-- just mattresses and an old TV. Our first night there, my brothers and I had a sleepover in that living room that looked, felt, and even smelled unfamiliar, falling asleep to the sound of the first ever showing of Camp Rock on Disney Channel. And in the morning when I woke up, I took my scooter for a spin while singing the songs I had heard the night before, making up new lyrics each time I sang it. In the afternoon, as I continued to roll around in circles, following closely behind my brother, whose scooter wheels were green, a school bus passed our house and promptly stopped at the end of the street. A handful of kids got off the bus, with backpacks that were half the size of their bodies. Two girls stopped at the house that was three doors down from ours and entered. Another 2 typed the garage code into the house across the street. The last three kids that were left, continued down the sidewalk until they made it to the house next door to ours. They saw my brother and I peeking our heads outside of the garage.
“Do you guys live here now?” They asked us. We slowly stepped outside of the shelter of our new home.
“Yeah,” We said in unison.
“Well you guys should probably know that there’s a wasp nest in your swing set,” The older girl informed us.
“Oh yeah,” the boy confirmed, “It’s literally huge.”
Great. I thought to myself. First we have to move away, then the moving van gets stolen, and now there’s a wasp nest in the swing set? I wondered if it was too late to ask Mom and Dad to move back. What I didn’t know is that those kids would later bring a broom up to the top of our swing set to help us dispose of the nest, and then let us camp out in their backyard until the angry wasps were gone. I didn’t know that the 2 girls who lived down the street would introduce me to Taylor Swift and the cheerleading coach who lived at the end of the block. I didn’t know that I would babysit for the first time for the kids who lived across the street. I didn’t know that a few years down the road, my mom would bring a new baby brother home from the hospital or that one day, that house would finally look, feel, and smell familiar. But what I least expected, was that 7 years after that first day, I would move again.
My reaction to our second move was similar to my reaction to the first-- sheer and utter anger. Only now I was older, established, comfortable, and again I was faced with change. The moving truck made it to our new house in one piece that time, but Florida was hot and I had grown accustomed to hoodies. So in boycott of our move, I wore hoodies in 90 degree weather every, single, day. I sat in the back of classrooms and kept to myself because part of me was convinced that if I pretended I never moved, I might end up back in my old house with my old friends at my old school, in comfortable hoodie weather. It took me longer to adjust than it did when I was little. Making friends wasn’t as easy as it used to be, when all it took was knocking down a wasp nest to be someone’s best friend. Yet sometime down the road I found myself content again. I found myself at homecoming dances and football games and beaches on the weekend. I found myself hopping between houses each night to have sleepovers with my best friends, making sure to stop at Dunkin’ Donuts each time I passed it on my way out of the neighborhood. In this new house, I found myself fall in and out of love twice (actually, maybe one and a half times... I'm still not quite over the second one...). In this house, my brother shared a bathroom with me, and woke me up every morning to the sound of his country music playing loud enough for him to hear over the shower. In this house, “Marco Polo, 1, 2, 3, NOT IT,” was the start to every Sunday.
I wish I could have gone back in time and told myself to say, “Not it!” more times than I said, “But Dad, my hair is straight. I don’t want to get it wet!” Because 4 years after that move, I am faced with change yet again. My brother is moved out of the house, so now I rely on an alarm clock to wake me up each morning. Now I switch between houses for sleepovers, knowing in the back of my mind that there are a limited amount of sleepovers left. I jump in the pool without wondering what will happen to my hair because I’d rather get as many games of Marco Polo in as possible before time runs out. Now I am months away from moving again-- only this time I’ll be on my own, in a different city, studying at a brand new school with people I have never met. The anger hasn’t taken over this time, however, for the experiences I’ve had with change in the past, have only proven to bring me good things, good people, good memories. So while I know I’ll look back and miss this little stage in my life, all I feel this time around is excitement in anticipation for the next chapter of my life, brought to me by the inevitable gift of change.