First Awareness

Have I mentioned yet that I totally believe in guardian angels? After we moved to New Hampshire, a year later, I went back to Portland for a visit, and looked up my old friend. (She had been pretty much my only friend from fourth grade through sixth.) Seventh grade and puberty had changed her dramatically. She wore a bra and was beginning to smoke and take an interest in boys. She insisted on helping me buy my first bra, which I wouldn't really need for another four years, but we stuffed it with toilet paper in the ladies room of the department store. I was excited and embarrassed. I wasn't ready to grow up. I had buried all memories of inappropriate afternoons with my grandfather, and had embraced the simple country life. My new friends were socially retarded and I liked it that way. Our idea of fun was reciting all fifty six verses of the Highwayman and squirting catsup at the final gunshot, ending that beautiful maudlin poem in hysterics and tears.

The meeting with my old changed friend made me sad, (she had grown up way too fast for me to comprehend) and yet grateful to be alive in a way I hadn't ever experienced. I was now convinced that guardian angels were at work and I had been blessed with one. Mine had obviously moved me out of a dangerous world—junior high in a big city—to a small town country setting.