Puberty

Unibrows, acne, and still trying to figure out your bra size.

For most, the stagnant years of puberty tend to be complicated and uncomfortable. The word “awkward” seemed to resonate with this particular time in my life. Awkward as far as figuring out who I wanted to be and what I wanted to look like. This was the time in my life where I began to figure it all out. Where I began to pluck and shape my own eyebrows (after my sister taught me of course) and care about what I was wearing to school.  I wouldn’t say these were my rebellious years (those would come later), these were the years where I analyzed how I was going to live my life. Was I going to be the best human I could be? The best daughter, sister, friend? Was I going to dance to the beat of my own drum? This was what puberty represented to me. Not just the awkwardness, but the revelation of what would come after.  After I figured it all out, or most of it.  Now what puberty sounded like was Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel singing “I am a Rock,” and memorizing all the verses to Don Mclean’s “American Pie.” Why it sounded like this was because I preferred spending time with my mother.

I particularly remember spending time with my mother on Sundays. It always started the same with going to church and coming back to the house for a lazy and relaxed Sunday afternoon. I loved how slow Sundays felt and how after a long week at school, or with sports, Sundays always seemed so sacred and untouchable. Like no matter what was going on in our life, or how much, Sundays always felt a little magical, always reserved for resting and recharging. My mom would take a nap, my dad would be either working down in the basement or out in the barn on a project, and I would do whatever I wanted. I would read. I began to scrap book. I cleaned my room. I decorated it differently. I decorated it again. I watched movies in the playroom, went for walks out in our back fields, ate Campbell’s broccoli and cheese soup for lunch.  And on those late Sunday afternoons my mom and I began to bake.

Our baking tradition began with this apple cake recipe my mom had found in a Country Living magazine. We looked it over and thought one Sunday, we would try it. And so, we did. The only trouble we had was perfecting the apple butter glaze for the cake’s topping, but once done, it tasted like any fall day should. Pure perfection and crisp bliss. It smelled like fall should too. Warm apples and toasted walnuts. After our first trial run, we knew we had to make it again, and again and again. The more we made it, the easier it got, the better our product. I loved those Sundays spent in the kitchen with my mother. All with the soundtrack of Simon and Garfunkel songs in the background or Don Mclean’s hearty voice. I loved how simplistic the songs sounded as we beat the batter and licked the bowl.  I loved how natural it was to learn the lyrics, because like me, my mom liked to listen to the same CD over and over again. Until scratches formed and the irritating skips began to occur.

These Sundays with my mother made me into a baker and into a teenager who enjoyed spending time with her mother. Who enjoyed being home. I had to overcome the complicated and at times all so normal norm, that spending time with your mother was “taboo”, or gosh, who wanted to do that? We were different. I still loved it when my mother hugged me or when we cuddled on the couch before she went to bed. I had to overcome the fact that probably none of my other friends were doing this with their mom, but I wasn’t going to stop just because they weren’t. I was going to continue loving and spending time with my mother to the greatest extent possible, because I absolutely loved and adored her. I loved how she made me feel and how through her I grew into a more secure and confident person. That by choosing to be in her presence, it made me feel like I could be or do anything. Which was how I matured into living my life. By my own standards, not by my same aged friends or the tween girls I watched in my 90’s VHS tapes. I decided to be me, not them. If it wasn’t for that apple cake and the sacredness of Sundays in our house, I know I would have developed into a very different person. A very different woman.

I was raised in a house where we danced to loud music in the dining room after dinner. It could have been Tim McGraw, “Cecelia”, Springsteen, or Celine Dion.  My mom loved to dance, and that made me, and my sisters love to dance too. I was raised in a house where we all ate dinner together. My mother always cooked, or figured it out, and my father always asked us what we learned in school that day. By them asking and wanting to know, we told, and that only made our relationship more transparent. I was raised in a house where we played pitch and backgammon after dinner, where winning was favored by my mother and sister, who were always paired on the same team. I was on my father’s team, and we mainly lost and dealt with it. I was raised with opening a different Christmas present each night before Christmas, and where we always decorated for every holiday, beds were always made, the windows were always open, and candles were always lit. I was raised where my puberty was more a part of growing up and gaining knowledge, than a part of letting go and slipping away.

I learned more of who I was becoming through puberty and those years of becoming closer to my mother than any other time in my life. Those were my make it or break it years of maintaining my old soul and big heart. An angel on earth in my mother’s eyes. Those were the years of shedding my skin, for only a better, fresher one. It is hard to look back and see myself in my awkward and unknowing years, but after my breakthrough in puberty, I only bloomed into something more beautiful. Maybe it was baking the apple cake, maybe it was the way 60’s music sounded to my young ears, maybe it was how my mom still hugged and kissed me good night. Whatever it was, if I had to do puberty all over again, I would, knowing that everything would turn out okay.  Better than I ever imagined.