Fourteen.

Andy painted our bedroom while I was gone with the kids up north to Baudette to visit my family over the weekend. The Ziobrowskis were visiting from North Carolina and I haven’t seen my goddaughter, Claire, in almost a year. She’s not a baby anymore. The kids are at the perfect age to start loving to play together with their cousin… it was really fun to watch. I hope as they grow up they feel as close to Claire as I felt to my cousins while we were all growing up. A really magical time of my life, and I hope for theirs, too.
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The smell of the fresh paint as I’m trying to fall asleep reminds me of the summer when I was fourteen, almost fifteen. That was the summer that Auntie Nancy came to stay and helped me redecorate my bedroom, the year I attended cheerleading camps back to back all summer long, the summer I babysat the darling 9-month-old girl whose family had moved into the home of my best friend who had moved away years earlier, the summer my parents finally let me get a kitten, and the year I had my first real boyfriend and my first real “freedom.”
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It guess it would have been 1996 (it took me a long time to figure that out). It was the summer that “What’s The Story Morning Glory” was the cassette in my walkman — I was still wary of CDs at that point; you couldn’t make “mix CDs” like you could make mix tapes!  My aunt moved into my bedroom for the summer because my parents wanted me under constant supervision, though I didn’t realize that was the reason for her extended visit.  My parents had caught me with cigarettes  (!!) earlier that spring and I’m sure they thought that was to be the beginning of my downfall; suddenly I had an adult chaperone but I didn’t mind because my Godmother was so much fun to have around.  She was fired up to do fun projects together like picking strawberries and making strawberry jam.  She also helped me redecorate my bedroom for the first time since I had been a toddler moving into my parents’ newly built home — aside from the redecorating I did with the cutouts from my magazines and the hundreds of photos of Leonardo DiCraprio wallpapering an entire wall, that is.
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Nancy helped me not only paint over the baby pink walls of my childhood bedroom, but she also taught me (and mom) how to sponge-paint.  That was the summer my room turned into the early-90s-style gray/pink/white sponge-painted bedroom of my dreams.  (Only to be painted over in dark blue by my brother who couldn’t wait to move into my room the second I left home for college four years later, but that’s another story…)  Anyway, in the late summer after my aunt had gone home to Nevada, I remember sitting in my bedroom with my new fluffy kitten, smelling the fresh paint, and thinking I was the luckiest girl ever.  (I still hadn’t figured out the whole aunt-as-a-chaperone thing, though; Mom didn’t confess that one until just a couple of years ago! I really thought she was just there to spend a fun summer with us!)
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As I look back on that summer now — fourteen years and literally half my life later — I realize it really was one of my very most golden of summers.  It seemed to last for so long, yet now as I remember it I can’t believe how much I fit into those three short hot months in 1996.
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I had my first regular babysitting gig that summer.  I loved the little baby I watched most weekdays while her parents were working.  Her crib was set up in her bedroom right where my friend Sara’s bed had been sitting years earlier as we stayed up watching “Full House” and “Family Matters” on prime-time TGIF television during our frequent sleepovers.
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When I wasn’t babysitting, I spent the afternoons with my boyfriend (at the park, around town, wherever — I wasn’t usually allowed to have him in my parents’ house when they weren’t there.)  We walked and biked a lot that summer.  We rode to the old abandoned train depot where we’d carve our initials in the crumbling bricks and touch the trains as they roared past, slowing to go through customs as they crossed the river into Canada.  We climbed the grain elevator and looked out over the town of Baudette.  We hid beneath the bridge to sneak awkward first-kisses.
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I had cheerleading camps away from home that summer.  One was several hours away in North Dakota; it was my first experience of “summer camp” as I hadn’t done Bible camps or anything as a younger child.  We had the first “real” cheer coach that Baudette had probably ever seen and had spent the previous school year practicing for and competing in (and placing very well) in state competition.  We were the “best” cheerleaders at camp and had the most impressive stunts and most complicated routines.  We were feeling pretty superior.  After spending the day practicing, we’d go to sleep in bunk-style dormitories and I’d listen to my mix tape of Oasis, “Tha Crossroads” and LeAnn Rimes (a really odd mix in hindsight; Nancy really liked LeAnn Rimes so that explains that much).   The next camp was in Bemidji at BSU, where my sister was actually going to school at the time.  We stayed in real dorms and I wrote sappy love letters to Jason and called him with a calling card every night even though I was only gone for a week.  When I got home, Mom and Dad finally consented to getting a kitten when Mom’s coworker’s cat had the most adorable Persian/Himalayan-mix kittens.  We chose Sugar, who was the tiniest little puff of white fuzz and the most adorable kitten I had ever seen.
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That was the summer that lasted forever.  It was the year I watched the Independence Day fireworks while lying in the grass at the bottom of the hill with Jason on one side and my very best friend, Courtnay, on the other.  It was the year I had the freedom to stay out even later than my parents for special occasions like the Fourth of July street dance; the year we stood underneath my parents’ bedroom window at midnight on the eve of their wedding anniversary and sang “Happy Anniversary To You!” at the top of our lungs to the tune of the birthday song.
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It was a really, really wonderful summer and so many of my very treasured memories are from that year.  I hope I never forget.

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