"Packing" by Deborah Kim, 19
I'm trying to breathe.
The bathroom light's dim and I'm staring at the mirror. My mouth's twisted at the corners in an ugly grimace. I'd laugh at how I look, but it's not funny. My eyes sting.
It's April, I'm 15, and my parents tell me we're moving in July. "San Diego will be wonderful," my mother says in Korean, as if she expects me to grab that sentence like a present, squeeze it tightly.
I define my life by the schools I've gone to. It's the only way I can remember how many times I've moved. I've lived in more than eight cities, usually only one or two years each, most dotting the breadth of Southern California: Los Angeles' graffiti-stained streets to Riverside's sweet suburban orange groves to Pasadena, home of the Rose Parade. And once, for only six months, in Dayton, Ohio, crisply folded in snow and bordered by woods. I'd started fourth grade in September with everyone else in California, then had to move that winter and finish off the school year in Ohio.
I've learned how to pack my life neatly into cardboard boxes. But there are always things I lose, no matter how hard I try. The worst thing is the people. Somewhere there must be a how-to book on letting teenage friendships go: Step one, announce you're leaving. Step two, not-so-bittersweet gatherings, all softened by vehement promises to keep in touch. Step three, move away. Step four, write and write, and realize that you can't possibly record your life in these envelopes. Still, I eagerly pick new kinds of stationery, collect e-mail addresses.
"Dear Deborah, How are you? I am fine. Remember that one time you gave me that sticker, well I got one for you this time. Also, I got a new dog!!! I miss you. Write back!!! Love,"
They all go something like this. It's not sad, not really, because my life goes on, too, but it's troubling. I only remember faint, vaguely rosy details of each city. This is six months of Ohio: Drew was hilarious and grinned a lot, tan skin, a round face, hair shaved so his scalp showed. "You used to be quiet, now you're so loud!" he'd said at the end of the year. Beth: rectangular-rimmed thick glasses, mousy hair in unruly waves, pointed nose, pale. My favorite friend, because she was as quiet as I was, at least on the surface. I think I made her cry once with my bossiness. I wish I could reach back, say I'm sorry again. We must have made up, like kids do, "sorry" and "it's OK," apologies in the form of orange Popsicles. This is troubling, too: my friends forever frozen as they were when I left them, even though I know they've moved on.
People get replaced on both sides, and somehow everything ends up being cut apart like packing tape. Or maybe that's not the right analogy, not always; maybe it's more like a hunk of cheese, grated away until it's gone. You nick the skin on a knuckle. To my parents, not seeing someone for months, even for a few years, they're still friends in the adult world. But to me, a friend must stay constant; we must thrive. If we grow apart, it's lost because people change, especially if you're 15. There are too many things that matter: different favorite color, new crush, new car. Suddenly you don't know that person anymore.
My friend Zul, from fifth and sixth grade, Riverside, sent me a letter a few years ago with a photo: her as a cheerleader, fierce, grinning, proud, with cheerful teeth and dark hair pulled tight from her face into a smart ponytail. Did I suspect she would become a cheerleader? Sure, of course she would. Not the ditzy giggling type, but a warrior, assured and capable. But it's not enough because people will never tell you the exact details that make up their life, just things that occur to them. "I have some of your pictures," she writes. "I hope you still draw." I do still draw, but I don't bother to tell her this, and that letter is one of the last times I'll hear from her.
My father is an ordained minister of the United Methodist Church, which means our family relocates whenever the bishop assigns him to another congregation. I'm a P.K., a Preacher's Kid, which is strange to announce at a new school because it has loaded connotations. Oh, goody two-shoes most people think and immediately censor their R-rated swearing, as if I'll call down the Almighty Wrath of God to scorch the soles of their feet.
I never thought I'd get used to Barstow -- that little tourist stop on the way to Las Vegas, in California's Mojave Desert, dry and mercilessly hot. Miles of dusty sand, brush and rock cramp it from all corners. It's literally in the middle of nowhere. But I did get used to it, somehow. I got used to 110 degrees in late May and driving 40 miles to reach the next city.
I made it past the painful first day of school, the nerve-racking routine of invading a place where everyone else has jostled shoulders and built up kingdoms of nicknames. I'd done it so often that I know how to square myself. I find an open spot at the lonely end of a lunch table and eat quietly, waiting for someone to talk to me. This is why I've always been a nose-burier in books: I can distract myself and make friends effortlessly -- war-painted animals, doomsday viruses, kid heroes.
Lunch that day was abrasive, I remember: A Mexican girl in front of me in line shoved her face near mine and demanded, "You China?" I wanted to cross it out in midair, in bright red ink: China. Chinese. I wasn't a country by myself.
"No," I said, "I'm Korean." Would she really care to know that I'd never been to South Korea or that I'd been born in California? I was American, just as she was, but Barstow was a smaller community than what I'd been used to. There were so few Asian kids that we were distinct and instantly recognizable. In the last class of my first day, I befriended a girl, Annie, with curly strawberry blonde hair and a bright grin. She was a P.K., too, and knew about moving because her dad was a U.S. Army chaplain. They moved her to Japan the next year, and for a while I got her letters in equally curly red handwriting and sent letters back until they stopped.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
"The new church needs your father," my mother says. "It's very small."I run from her and slam the door -- even though I know. I know that whatever staggering inconvenience this is to me, I have no choice. I drag an arm roughly across my face. Some part of me says maybe there's a reason we're moving. Maybe God wants this for us. Maybe it'll be better there.
I take another breath.
I think of the changes. I think of the constants. I think of what stays with me -- my family. They have taught me never to take things for granted, to be perpetually thankful. To value people, always, to read books, do your best, be happy, we love you.
And with each move there is more and more comfort in the intangible, the digital. I've found that the Internet isn't stuffed full of seedy 60-year-old perverts but people like me -- who live wherever, doesn't matter -- posting adamantly about favorite bands, books, movies, arguing video game nuances. I'm not going to lose these friends: If they change, I'll change with them.
I looked up a few childhood names on Facebook some time ago. I immediately found profiles that I recognized, but I didn't message them. I just grinned to myself in a wave of warmth, wondering how they were doing, how much they'd changed, what they were into now. Then I closed the window.
I won't ever be completely ready to move. But coping with all these changes will help me face the adult world head-on. I'll continue to adapt, to grow, to learn. I just have to trust that. I close my eyes and tell myself, in another bathroom that soon won't be mine, it'll be OK. I flick off the light.
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