Designated Doodler

I remember that exact moment so well. Sitting down at my new desk in my new room at my new house with my first piece of homework. It was English, it was easy, and I was more than ready to escape the relentless desert-scape that was the panhandle of Texas. One of my Dad's old coworkers used to say that Borger wasn't hell, but you could see it from there. Houston felt like a new start. I had painted my room with my mom before we had even moved into the house. The room was blank and in the dim evening light as we worked it transformed into a beautiful light blue. I remember lying down to go to sleep on one of those first weeks spent in the house, thinking to myself, this is the room you're going to grow up in. And it would be. It was the room where I celebrated my 13th birthday, the room where I spent my time watching JAG, building model airplanes and teaching myself how to draw. It's where I read my favorite book for the very first time. It's where I cri...

The sky kisses the roof in a sherbert sunriseBathing the red house on the corner In brilliant yellow light That makes the grass glow neon green Is it the day of the yard sale Friendly unfamiliar faces Buying snippets of your life Little chunks of memories Passed to others for the right price Or is the day I learned to drive As gathering storms swirled In the dark gray skies Rain hurling down On a girl with wide eyes Maybe it's a day from this very month Where we came together in hugs and words And laughed in tandem In a life and room transformed The walls, the house, just a whisper of what had been Close your eyes And pick a memory at random Starring the home on this land Where you once stretched To reach the sink with baby hands Where you felt the burning smack Of spitting water on a sunburnt teenaged back Where you hugged your loved ones Before they left this earth It held your family It took your heart Watched you grow tall Saw you depart We...

Leaving Pennsylvania is never easy. It's where I grew up, it's where the majority of my family lives. And every time the car leaves Beaver and heads towards the airport I get the same sad feeling in the pit of my stomach. I don't feel like I'm going home, I feel like I'm leaving home. I remember meeting my Principal before starting kindergarten. I remember catching fireflies in jars with my cousins and playing chameleon with my grandma. It's where my uncle taught me how to drive and where I picked out my first little baby kitten when I was five. There were family dinners and slipping beneath the table with my cousin so that we could sneak off to go play Playstation. We would slide around on the kitchen floor in our socks and pretend that bunk beds were rocket ships. There were fireworks on hilltops bursting above bridges on the 4th of July and Super Bowl parties with black and yellow chips. I slept on Snoopy sheets at my grandma Barb's and watched Re...