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My Portable Family
by Noa Jones
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Please don't ask me where I grew up. If you do, I'll either have to make up
some vague answer ("Uh, here and there") or bend your ear with the truth ("I
was born on a little island called Manhattan, and by the age of 3, I was
calling California home. Then, two years later . . ."). And I'll also have to
explain that no, my dad wasn't in the military--it's just that my mom kept
coming up with new reasons to pack up the Parcheesi board and the
parakeets and the bunk beds and wave goodbye to whatever life we had
settled into. The announcements came about every two years. I never got
used to the feeling that followed, like swallowing a boa constrictor that would
wrap around my heart and weigh me down through the summer and into the
new school year. Then, time to be The New Girl. Again. At the very least, my
mother had the decency to move us during the summers so we wouldn't have
to switch schools midsemester. So many Junes my brother and I would head
to New York to visit our father, then return to our mother weeks later in a
new town with a new house for us to explore and new bedroom territory for
us to divvy up. I can't exactly say I remember the early moves. I was born in
New York City, then lived one year in upstate New York, then two in Bolinas,
California, then four in Boulder, Colorado, and two more in Aspen,
Colorado, then over to Santa Fe, New Mexico, for two and back to Boulder
for another four. When I was little, it was pretty easy to make new friends. I
was one of those kids who would just sidle up to you at the supermarket and
say, "Wanna play?" I'd keep asking until someone said okay and didn't let it
faze me when someone said no right to my face. If only that technique had
worked all the way through high school. When I was in the fourth grade, after
we'd lived in Boulder four years and I'd established myself in school as a
troublemaking tomboy, my brother and I were presented with a series of
announcements. Not only were we getting a new stepdad and baby sister, we
were moving into a new house in a new town, Aspen. Instead of chaining
myself to the banister and refusing to leave, I seized the day. I was a bit tired
of my bad-girl image, and it seemed that changing into an entirely different
person was the solution to all my problems. And moving hundreds of miles
seemed like the perfect opportunity to make the change. I shed my first
name, Noa, and adopted my middle, Christine, and I refused to speak to my
family if they called me anything else. During the weeks before the move, I
purchased new clothes, practiced new walks, adopted a new smile and a whole
new charming personality. I imagined that in my new school, in my new
town, I would be popular and sweet and cute, and everyone would love me. I
became obsessed with the first day of school--sharpening pencils and
practicing my new handwriting. Gone would be the ratty tomboy. I would be
A New Girl. Literally. Unfortunately, pristine Christine died about two weeks
into the school year, the day I wore a pair of sneakers that all the other girls
made fun of. Her spirit came to life again, though, for a brief period during
our move to Santa Fe the summer after sixth grade. I made my bed, ironed
my jeans and tried my best to impersonate the most popular girl at my
middle school in Aspen. But that time Christine lasted only about a day and
a half. She stranded me on the four-square court when a bunch of squirmy
boys started laughing at me because my zipper was down. Though that was a
rocky start, my Santa Fe years actually ended up being some of my happiest.
A month after I started school there, my class went on a camping trip. Maybe
it was the golden leaves and the bright-blue sky, or the hours of Truth or
Dare or even the freeze-dried cherry pie, but something helped bring all 30 of
us together as a big group--and I found my place as the class clown. People
called me Christine only because I didn't feel like retraining my family, but I
felt free to be the moving person I'd been trying so hard to hide: myself, Noa.
And then, the following summer, the announcement came. We were moving
back to Boulder. I cried so hard that my mother promised it would be our
last move ever. Returning to Boulder after four years was weird. My old
tomboy friends looked like mutants in all their makeup. They probably
thought the same of me, all decked out, Santa Fe-style, looking like a cross
between Janis Joplin and Pocahontas. I don't think I would have ended up
with them even if I had gone to the same junior high. That move was the first
time I didn't try to be the perfect Christine. I'd gotten used to just being
myself--even if it didn't exactly attract many friends. I wasn't desperate,
though, because I was convinced that at any minute I'd get the call to go
back to Santa Fe to live with a friend. But I had to deal with Boulder until
then. Instead of actively seeking out friends, I had to defend myself from the
mean kids in the school. I got pretty good at being defensive, aloof and
acting like an airhead. And after a while, I adopted the
if-you-can't-beat-'em-join-'em attitude: One week I'd hang with the
metalheads, spitting Slurpees at strangers; the next I'd be hanging with the
homegirls. I guess I wasn't really hip enough to hang, though, because soon I
was helping a hippie girl weed her mother's organic-vegetable garden. The
kids who finally became my good friends--good enough to get me to abandon
my return-to-Santa Fe plots--ended up being pretty much like me: vagabonds,
granolas, the children of flower children, kids who could relate to the U-Haul
hopscotch my family had been playing. That move back to Colorado in the
ninth grade had been the most difficult by far, and the friends I banded with
were all the more special for it. It had taken almost a year to find them, and
I'd been happy for a few months when . . . the announcement came. Again.
Despite my mother's promise. But this time, I had a counter-announcement. I
just didn't think it would be possible for me to take another boa constrictor.
I was staying put, living with a friend and finishing high school. So my family
moved to Providence, Rhode Island, without me. The four years I spent in
Boulder during high school is the longest I have ever lived in one place
straight. Maybe it's my limit. Maybe my mother's wanderlust wore off on me.
After high school graduation, I picked up and moved myself to Israel to pick
avocados. And while I was there, I decided once and for all--after eight years
of trying to become Christine--to be Noa again. |
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