fiction (i): the life and loves of a homeschooled girl

I was truly happy for them both. Really. My sister Jen was getting him, and he was getting my sister, and I wished them the best. Truly.

“Ouch!” I jerked.

“I’m sorry!”

The girl behind me moved the curling iron a bit away from the side of my face as I held up the hand mirror to see the progress. My stylist, a friend of the maid of honor, had an abnormally dark tan, a pretty spattering of freckles, and full lashes thick with mascara. Highlighted chestnut ringlets, hourglass silhouette, pencil skirt, and 2-inch heels combined with a carefree Georgia peach accent, musical laugh, and genuine interest towards those around her.

I felt like a second-rate peon next to such perfection.

I put down the mirror and glanced to my right. Jen was bending over the full length mirror putting on some last minute lipstick before the bridal photo shoot. She looked . . . she looked like a bride. Breathtaking. My stomach flip-flopped once. He would be smitten. He already was. But he would be smitten all over again. I could almost see his grin stretch from ear to ear. Or maybe he’d cry. Either way would be so him.

I held back a sigh and looked forward. Reality. Reality was this church nursery. The slight smell of baby powder and Clorox wipes not quite abolished by hairspray and perfume. Reality was the rocking chair I was sitting in, needing a professional to do my hair because I had no idea how to make it wedding-worthy on my own.

Reality was that this room represented my humdrum life, and I was happy with it. I was. It was Jen’s day to shine.

“Who’d ya get a text from?” one of the bridesmaids asked Jen. My sister had grabbed her phone from her purse and flipped it open.

“Who d’ya think?” replied another bridesmaid, raising her eyebrows. They giggled.

Jen’s face, still bent over her phone, glowed. “Aww, look at what he said!”

The bridesmaids gathered around the phone and read the text out loud: “Hey, I’ve got an idea! Let’s get married today!”

“Isn’t that sweet?”

“He’s so cute!”

“What’re you going to say back?”

“You two were just made for each other!”

I held up the hand mirror again and looked at the warm ringlets piling high on top of my head. Was I to be a poodle or a moose?

~*~

Jennifer and I grew up as the Stern girls. Sometimes we begged Mom and Dad for a little brother or sister, but neither wish was granted, and we remained a small middle class family of two parents, two children. I was the oldest. Jen was a year younger.

The summer I was to enter first grade, our parents pulled us from Northridge Christian School on the outskirts of our California hometown.

“One day,” according to Mom’s telling of the story, “I realized that I wanted to see my little girls more! So I went to your dad, and he said, ‘Well, if you want to homeschool, let’s pray about it.’”

“And God said ‘yes’!” we liked to chime in.

Mom would smile, “Yes, He did. And I haven’t regretted one minute I’ve gotten to spend with my two lovely girls.”

Thus began our life as homeschoolers, a culture of its own with common experiences, shared camaraderie and unique trends and fads.

Mom got us involved right away with the Joyful Noise homeschool group. Once a week we met with other families for a day at the park, plus there were tons of field trips and co-op classes.

It was at one such field trip that I first began to take notice of those unnamed, unspoken, unintelligible creatures that change every woman’s life eventually, if one is so lucky.

In other words, I noticed my first boy!

Jen and I were dressed in bonnets and calico cotton dresses, ready for our historical adventure into the 1800s. As Mom parked the car, I spotted my very best friend Luanne. She was 7 like me and wore a high collar white blouse tucked into a full, blue paisley skirt with white eilette on the bottom. Mom had met Mrs. Sparks, Luanne’s mom, at Jazzercise, and they had been delighted to find a fellow kindred spirit in each other.

Next to Luanne, pulling on Mrs. Sparks’ hand, was Joey. At 4 years old he was the kind of child that adults describe as “all boy.” In other words, he was wiggly, stinky, and lacked any sense of decorum. Wherever Luanne went, Joey went.

“It’s the buddy system,” Mrs. Sparks would say with a smile as Joey pulled Luanne off to the short red slide or the baby swings or to the green caterpillar crawling along the sidewalk just waiting to be picked up. Joey could never stay still for two seconds together, and sometimes I wished the buddy system would go away so Luanne and I could have grown-up conversations by ourselves.

We jumped out of the car and joined the other homeschoolers on the curb. The Andersons were there. They didn’t have any girls my age, but they had a boy a year older than me. His name was Michael.

Inside the gate, a lady gathered us all together and talked to us about John Sutter and the gold rush. Then she led us over to a long wooden box with water running through and showed us how the miners would pan for gold. She said that often miners would think they had found gold when really it was fool’s gold.

Michael piped up. “The Bible says that people who say there is no God are fools.”

Michael was so smart. Probably the smartest boy in the whole homeschool group.

After panning for gold, we walked around the fort. Luanne, Jen, and I dipped candles into hot wax, ran a carding comb over a wooly sheep, and watched a blacksmith pound iron that had been heated in a fire. At noon, we sat down to each lunch in front of the general store. I scooted next to Luanne.

“Want my sandwich?” Joey asked from Luanne’s other side. He stuck his peanut butter and jelly sandwich in front of my face. Purple goo dripped from the side and landed in the dust.

I tried to be polite, I really did. But it came out as an emphatic “no!”

“Are you sure?” He pushed the sandwich close to my nose.

“Ugh!” I pulled back and almost lost my balance.

Luanne pushed her brother’s hand away. “Joey, stop playing and eat your sandwich.”

She sounded so mature. I wondered if I would sound so grown-up if I had a younger sibling. Jen didn’t count.

Joey made a face and scooted a couple inches away, taking a bite and looking down the sidewalk. A show was just beginning.

It was Michael. Mom called him a ham, but I thought he was fun. Smart and fun. He was strutting across the boardwalk with a piece of straw sticking out of his mouth.

“Hey there, folks,” he said, smiling to the other kids and tipping his straw hat as he walked by. The girls giggled, and the boys laughed and pointed. He passed Joey, who tried to trip him with an outstretched hand, but Michael quickly sidestepped him, passed Luanne, and then stopped right in front of me.

Off came his hat over his heart, and he bowed deeply. I could feel the heat rising in my cheeks and I let out an impulsive giggle. As he rose he wiggled his eyebrows and with a cowboy accent said, “Howdy-do, pretty little lady.”

“Michael, come eat your lunch!” His mother’s shrill voice interrupted the flirtation.

He sauntered back down the sidewalk, his thumbs hooked in his pockets.

Michael Anderson had just called me a pretty lady.

Right before he joined his mother, he looked back at his delighted audience, winked in my direction, took a confident step backward, tripped over the horse trough, and landed seat first in the mud.

My friends roared. Parents admonished us to be kind. My cheeks reddened and my breath caught. His mother scolded Michael good, and he ate his lunch in conspicuous silence. The rest of the day I avoided looking at him, too embarrassed for him because of the tongue-lashing and dirtied backside. Still, when I could, I stole peeks at him. He was the cleverest, most agreeable boy in the whole world.

I, Trisha Mae Stern, was smitten.