Change?

Addendum:  This is a paper I wrote for my Creative Non-Fiction Class this week.  I thought it was kind of fun and some what snarky.  Hope you enjoy it.

 

When I was four, I dreamed about the day when I would walk down the aisle, staring into the blue eyes of my intended. His name was Charles, and I was supposed to be his wife, to grow up to add to the population of pastor’s babies.  Never dreamed that change would come. 

            When I turned ten, the innocent fun was over.  I begged him to stay, but with a slam of the proverbial door, and a very steep hill in the setting desert sand, Charles followed my father’s departure into the horizon.  Change had arrived.  I also started my period that summer, making the changes in my bra area that much more prevalent.  Gee wiz…talk about luck. 

            I met a boy, again. A blue eyed god this one, with the voice of an angel and the exotic skin of the Mediterranean.  The other girls thought so too.  I caught his eyes with my own dark looks, but couldn’t manage to keep them.  Not long before he changed his mind too. 

            Love ‘em and leave ‘em became my personal motto.  Love them in a way they’d never forget.  Leave ‘em first.  Most still remember me. At least that’s what Facebook displays every time a new lost memory surfaces to request my friendship.  Did I ever really talk to you people?  I don’t remember if I did.  Hope it was good, although I have doubts on the stimulation of the brain cells with the passage of time.

 I left all my great loves before I was twenty.  Left the blue-eyed best friend I believed to be my soul mate for a cold and indifferent lover.  Stationed in Ft. Jackson, SC.  The arms of the ARMY beckoned me with promises of adventure and change.  Change from the little dust bowl I called home.  Off came the long tresses that branded me woman.  Donned were those beautifully proud greens, backed by the red, white and blue.  Change arrived again as swiftly as the day I signed the papers handing my life to that so-called lover, instead of attending a rather famous, (and very naked) bunny photo shoot in California.  My love for things green dwindled as freedom beckoned me with a tantalizing finger. 

            So I married a stripper in a gay bar after obtaining my release papers.  How’s that for a loop?  On top of the world, living in someone’s kitchen and sleeping on an air mattress.

 On top is how I found him over my best friend, and roommate when I was seven months pregnant with our baby girl.  Baby had no daddy after my night in a cold jail cell.  None of the officers blamed me of course, but they just couldn’t let me smack a guy in such a defenseless position.  Changed my mind about jail.  Sucked much worse than I first believed. 

Back home, hate Ohio, hate him.  Loved him, or the idea of him, ideal perhaps?  Safe in the desert sands again.  Safe and unchanging… except for the life that grew.  One sunny October morning, the biggest change of my nineteen years occurred.  I became Mommy.  Not only did my center of gravity shift, but my name changed in that second.  Regret?   Never.  It’s been ten years since that day, and I have continued the changing process.  Graduated from college, late, but done none-the-less.  Working on another degree.  Amazing for one who flunked out of Honors English in high school. 

Now, Baby two is almost three, and again, I dream of walking down the isle with my blue eyed fiance.  Only this time, he’s got a Spanish accent (although still named Charles), and a promise in his eyes.  The promise of changes to come.  The promise of no regrets, and of a future that only requires me to love.