It was a humid evening at the tail end of summer. My family was eating dinner around our picnic table when my mother spotted the hot air balloon, cresting down in the distance. I don’t remember who proposed we chase it to its landing spot, or who seconded, but suddenly half-gnawed corn on the cob clattered down on plates and we raced for the driveway.
At 12, I lived for moments like this — moments I could pretend I was still a kid.
I grew up in a nice suburb outside of Hartford, where summer was the season for indulging whims, camping in the backyard, swimming instead of bathing. It was the season I most appreciated having a brother — for the simpler, why-talk-when-we-could-be-jumping-off-this-rock way that boys play, the peace of ending each day bone-tired. Even my parents, strict during the school year, became kids every June.
Most of all, summer was the peak season for daydreams — my most passionate hobby then and now. There wasn’t much to do besides daydream, really, unless you were good at pickup sports or had many friends. That summer I was 12, about to start a junior high where I’d know almost nobody, I lived inside my head more than I did in the real world.
Pretty much everyone, I realize now, goes through an awkward phase and feels that their curse is unique. Yet it remains a fact that all the girls in my sixth-grade class glided through puberty overnight, while I alone remained flat-chested (noted by a classmate who spelled out my condition upside down on his scientific calculator), shy, glaringly uncool.
This is where daydreams came in handy. Inside my head, there was nothing stopping me from being the cute sister from the sitcom “Charles in Charge,” or as sassy and stylish as any girl you’d find in Seventeen magazine.
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