Thursday, April 22, 2010

Finding Her Voice


My 14 year-old daughter, Sophie, wrote this piece about a month ago. I wanted to print it right away, "Do you want to publish it? You can put it up on my blog if you'd like."
She looked pensive. "I don't know. What if it sucks?"
Now she sounded like a writer! "Do you like it?"
"Yeah. But..."
"If you want to wait or whatever, that's perfectly okay. Really. No pressure."
"Wait. If you publish it on your blog, I want attribution." Now she sounded like an author!


I Finally Found my Overalls

My mom told me about a week ago that if I cleaned out my closet she would take me to get new clothes. Seeing as I desperately wanted new shirts this didn’t seam to be a bad idea. Today was a half day at school so I picked today to go through my closet.


It’s always interesting what you find in a closet. There is always a lot of “Hey I didn’t know I had that.” or “So THAT’S where my English paper was!” And, every once in a while you might find something you didn’t bargin for. Like these overalls.


I wore these almost everyday in second grade. During the summer it was just me, my best friend Ry, and the overalls. Climbing trees, pretending to be super genius wizards who could make a poison out of everyday items; we saw the world in a different way. That thing in the backyard it wasn’t a tree to us, it was a look out post over our entire kingdom. *Pauses*


But people grow up, and apart. And one day, one summer, there were no more kingdoms, no more crazy concoctions, no more happy endings. The overalls started to see less and less day light and I saw less and less of my best friend.


Years passed, schools passed, summers passed. New friends were made, I discovered what cell phones, make-up, and boyfriends were. But I never let go of that little second grade me who loved castles, adventures, and tree climbing. The little second grade me who loved her best friend. I did, however, start to lose my overalls. I would do whatever people said was the “right thing” the “cool thing” I was just looking to find a new best friend.


Back to today. I was cleaning out my closet, and I made two piles on my bed: keep and give-a-way. As I got to the back of my closet I figured I could just throw all of what was left into the give-a-way pile. But then I found my overalls, and this time, I didn’t let them go.

-Sophie Biddle