The front yard of my childhood home was so small, nothing compared to where I live now. Yet, somehow, that stupid Magnolia tree beside the house means more to me than almost any other place in the world. It’s where I discovered my imagination. Every time I think of my childhood, I think of that tree. How even once I was older, I would sit in the branches for hours, just letting my thoughts run wild. There’s no telling how many shirts I ruined from climbing too high and slipping, tearing holes in my clothes on the way down. I make a purpose of driving by it every now and then to make sure the new owners are treating it right. The day I pass to see it gone, will be the day that a piece of me is gone too.
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My Uncle Jack’s sandbox is where I discovered what family was, the first time around. His home was the gathering place of every cousin, aunt, uncle, brother and sister, parent, and grandparent in my family. Fourth of July, Granny Cupp’s birthday, the beginning of spring and summer. Every great event started there, right after Uncle Jack took out his glass eye to make us squeal and go running. The “youngins” would gather in the shed-converted-sandbox to concoct our various versions of sandcastles and dream about how close we would all be when we were older. This gathering in the sand was only the beginning of our lives we planned together.
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The night we got my, now thirteen-year-old, Beagle is when I discovered my love for animals of all kinds. “Amber.” That’s the name I picked out because, at five, it was the prettiest name in the world. The prettiest name…that I could never remember. “What’s that name I like, Mommy?” So, my mother came up with a solution, choosing a name out of a hat. “Daisy.” That was the name she liked best, and I was convinced that’s the name she wrote on every piece of paper in the hat, Amber never stood a chance. It suited her, though, and I grew to love the name almost as much as the pet. I would come parading through the house in my pink cowgirl boots, a bandana tied around Daisy’s neck, “This is the dog I saved from Texas.” Because Texas was just desert and tumbleweeds in my mind. She’s my lifelong best friend, I can’t remember a time without her and knowing that she won’t live forever just seems unfair.
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Christmas morning 2009 was when I discovered my excitement. Being only nine years old makes everything bigger, but especially the racing feeling in your heart when you over-sleep on the happiest day of the year. I came running down the stairs, fuzzy-haired and clad in yellow, handmade pajamas with little ornaments all over them, seeing nothing but the Polly Pocket race track that would give me hours and hours of entertainment for years to come. Now it sits in a box in the garage, waiting for the children that I will probably never have, to wipe away the dust and play with the same intensity that I once did.
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Standing in the elevator on a cruise ship with my older sister was when I discovered my rebellion, the little of it that I claim to have. The entire week we were getting annoyed by our younger cousin and having to trail behind our grandparents because, apparently, a cruise ship was too large for eighteen and fourteen-year-olds. We all five got on the small, stuffy elevator together, but only three got off, my arm across my sister’s chest holding her back. I waited until my nan turned to look at us, smiled, and pressed the “close door” button on the panel. Of course, I opened it back up after a moment because being grounded on a cruise ship would be too much of an oxymoron for me to handle. But, the faces of surprise and the desire to have actually gone somewhere would always stick with me.
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Mid-way through my freshman year of high school is when I discovered my anxiety. I changed schools, which was something I had done several times in my childhood but avoided for around six years. Moving to a K-12 school with only about 48 students in my graduating class had me full of panic. How could I ever find friends when everyone else had known each other for years? It made me realize just how many people liked to shake hands. I wasn’t used to meeting that many new people. I thought shaking hands was for old men and those in business. Was I coming off weird? Did I shake that girl’s hand too violently? Why can’t we just smile and move on?
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Standing on the beach of Sanibel Island, Florida, on my eighteenth birthday was when I discovered I was growing up too quickly. Not exactly because of my age or anything to do with me. It was the day I was a bridesmaid for the first time in my life, which was exciting and yet nauseating. Unlike a regular wedding, the two bridesmaids weren’t actually in attendance to the wedding happening a little over a thousand miles away. My best friend and I were standing in the ocean, watching on FaceTime as our close friend vowed to spend the rest of her life with the boy she met in high school. She wanted us to be part of the wedding, but she didn’t want to wait the week for us to come back home, so we made do. Afterward, we rode bikes to a local gift shop to buy wedding presents, one of the most adult things I had ever done. “SANIBEL ISLAND” printed cheesily on a seashell frame, with promises to always be there for each other.
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Under the stars, with the smell of bonfire smoke resting on the clothes of all nine of us, was when I discovered what family was, for the second time. Genetically, we didn’t fit the bill of “family,” but yet that’s exactly what we felt like. We spent the night laughing until our stomachs ached at our sorry attempts to play cornhole, talking about life and what we wanted it to be like, and it finally felt like I had found my people. The people that I was supposed to find from the very beginning. A mismatched group of teenagers, all looking for a place to belong and finding it with one another. None of us realizing that this would be the start of a bond we would have never thought we could break. We were in this thing for the long-haul, ready to be there. Ready to show up. That’s the night I think back to during hard times, the night everything began.
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On a Greyhound bus, with twenty-two of my classmates, each of us ready to take on the world and so much more, was when I discovered my desire to travel. That bus had become my home for a week. A week that was filled with laughter, terrible singing that I somehow never wanted to get out of my head, and the shouting of numbers one through twenty-three to make sure each of us had safely found our way back. The bus became our little shelter as we traveled into Washington DC, New York City, and Gettysburg. It was the shield that we stood next to after exploring the great food of Little Italy and the adventures of China Town. We, as a class, had never felt closer to one another than we did in that week, and we would never again.
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Sitting on my bed at three in the afternoon on a crisp fall day was when I discovered who I am and what makes that person. The person who I’ve developed into through nineteen years of experiences and memories. A person who is still discovering what she wants and who she wants to become. And through life, I’m hoping to make many new discoveries about myself and the ever-changing, ever-growing person that I am becoming.
Kenzie Wright is a rising junior at the University of the Cumberlands. She is majoring in Communication Arts, with an emphasis on journalism and minoring in Creative Writing.
Pensworth 