The transition from sixth grade to seventh grade is a giant one.

1. You used to be a big fish in the small stagnant pond of sixth grade. Now you are a little fish in the big stagnant pond of junior high.
2. People used to know you in the lunch room, on the playground, in the office. Now NO ONE remembers your name. Or that you go to school there. Or that you exist.
3. The Cafetorium is the coolest place to hang out.
4. Sweat, odor and razors are now a part of your daily life.
5. And my personal favorite, you begin to hug your friends.

When you get to school and you see anyone you recognize at any of the lockers, there is an immediate hug.

OH MY GOSH, it’s Julie and Jenny! {hug, hug}. What’s up? How are you? Did you watch Who’s The Boss yesterday? Did you talk to Jessica on the phone last night? How’s she doing? Is she still sick?

And there are hugs all around as if Julie and Jenny and I haven’t seen each other in months or weeks.

In sixth grade, hugs were reserved for graduation, for end of the year parties, and when Jeremy Watson and whomever he was “going around” with at the time were hanging out near his really cool BMX after school. {It’s okay. My Jeremy Watson crush was short lived: he never tied his shoes or washed his hands.}

So when I arrived on the seventh grade scene and saw immense and frequent bouts of hugging, I thought (I kid you not):

I’m so glad the world isn’t getting worse. It’s actually getting better because everyone has begun to hug. EVERYONE HAS BEGUN TO HUG and it began with my seventh grade class. We actually invented the hug-when-you-see-someone form of greeting and someday they’ll trace it all back to us.

I can’t make this stuff up. I really thought this.

Naivete. Gullibility. Innocence. Whatever you want to call it. We knew we weren’t cool because the 8th graders made sure we knew that, but somehow we thought we might be able to change the world.

I couldn’t translate the shift in friendly affection as simply a slight SLIGHT maturity in us, a shift in our age, or that we now had less familiar people around us all the time. I thought we had completely and utterly invented the hug.

I was a sweaty idealist and I honestly didn’t realize people had been hugging in this way for a very long time.

There really is nothing new under the sun. Solomon had it right. Sometimes I laugh when I think that fifteen year old girls think that skinny jeans were invented for them, that it’s something NEW to discuss theology with a cigar in one hand and a beer in the other or that “social justice” is something entirely invented between 2010 and now.

It’s all been here before. We wore leggings in the eighties, CS Lewis drank a beer or two, and people have been working to care for the poor and marginalized for centuries.

But it’s new to us and that’s what’s important. It’s okay to be an idealist. It really is.

It’s okay to think we invented hugging. It’s okay to walk on the edge by discussing the Love and Grace and Hell while imbibing and it’s very okay to think that our new non-profit and for-profit orgs who are participating in social justice causes are cool.

We are children of the age we live in and it is really hard to translate our experiences into the perspective of the timelessness of the history of the world. It’s hard to exist outside of this tiny spot we live in.

Like 7^th grade.

So drink a beer (if you are of age and do it responsibly), wear your leggings (if they aren’t see through and if you aren’t a boy) and buy your fair-trade coffee (unless you are at a Starbucks and then go with the skinny peppermint mocha). Think you invented all of it if you want.

Be an idealist (with deodorant) for as long as you can because your I-can-make-a-difference attitude will be squeezed out of you quicker than a seventh grader can speed dial her BFF with a rotary phone in 1987.

Change the world before you realize you might not be able to and by all means, hug your friends.

Did you ever think you “invented” anything? Did you ever think you could change the world? Why do we stop feeling positive and idealistic about the world? What changes, do you think?

It’s like the worst ice breaker ever.

You are in some ridiculous work-related team-building session, or at a church women’s retreat, or in ANY situation where you are supposed to quickly and efficiently get to know someone.

“What is your most embarrassing moment, Sarah?”

Oh, you know. In 7^th grade someone pulled the chair out from under me the 2^nd day of Home Ec class. I was horrified, but I ended up becoming friends with that same girl later on so it really didn’t matter.

This is my normal, practiced, boring response to the MEM question until now.

Up until the other day when I remembered something far back into my adolescence that makes me completely cringe to think of it. It seriously might be the stupidest thing I really ever did. It eclipses, to many degrees, the 7^th grade tailbone-to-the-linoleum incident.

A few weeks ago my five-year-old, in asking about my recent Sunday spent away at Blog Sugar and in wondering about my upcoming trip to Pennsylvania also asked me what a Christian Women’s Blogging Conference is.

“Are you a Christian Woman Blogger, Mama?”

Yes, sweetheart. I am. How kind of you to notice.

“Hey Mom. Maybe you should go as a ‘blogger’ on Halloween.”

At first I laughed. Because that would be awesome. I’d carry my laptop, wear my workout clothes and put headphones in my ears as we trick-or-treated at dusk.

GASP. I already have. On accident. But not as a blogger. It took Naomi’s suggestion to help me reach back into my memory, into high school where no one ever should have to return.

I went as a literary character to a high school Halloween party.

Oh yes I did. I win the Nerd Award of the day.

In ninth grade I was a J.D. Sallinger nut. I read The Catcher in the Rye 4 times during that year. I thought I was cool because the protagonist, Holden Caufield said “damn” and things like that and I thought I was “getting away” with something each time I read it.

So, in 10^th grade I decided to go as Holden Caufield to a Halloween party. Except no one but I knew who I was trying to emulate. I wore a tweed-ish coat, silly librarian-looking glasses, penny loafers and carried a copy of Catcher peeking out of my pocket.

I mingled with Cheerleaders and Freddy Kruegers, with a few vampires and a group dressed as hippies from the 1960s. And then there was me. A writing wanna-be who wasn’t distinct enough in her costume to communicate.

Um, Sarah. Are you dressed up at all?

Who are you?

Who’s that?

I thought I could emulate the character by trying to dress the part. But my costume didn’t go far enough, and apparently didn’t reach far enough into pop culture to make a difference.

More than 20 years later I actually am a writer and as an introvert my tendency is to fade into the emotional background of life. But when it comes to other things, I want to be very clear about Who I am trying to emulate.

I’d like to be distinctly Christ-like in my love,

to be like Him in my grace-giving.

I’d like to emulate Jesus in my words and actions,

and to mimic Him in courage.

I don’t want the rest of my life to be a series of embarrassing moments of who-are-you-trying-to-be-like-Sarah? I’d like it to be more clear than a worn paperback out of my jeans pocket and a tweed jacket. I’d like it to be WHO I am.

What is your most embarrassing moment? Who have you tried to emulate in your life?

I went into their rooms late last night to check on them.

I kiss my littlest on the cheek. She’s lying on her back on the wrong end of the bed with her arm flung across her forehead. Her eyes are fluttery in a dream and I wonder who she’s playing horses with in her mind.

I climb up the ladder to my seven-year-old’s loft bed. Sometimes she’s too close to the far wall in the dark for me to kiss. But tonight she’s huddled near the edge, her braids across the Barbie pillowcase. In sleep, she’s stretched her hand out over the edge of the bunk, palm up, fingers half-way curled like she did when she was an infant. I kiss her open hand and then her forehead.

And I kiss her forehead a second time for not checking on her the night before.

Because I didn’t come in on Thursday night. I was too tired. Or lazy. I let my husband do it. He tucked them in and made sure they had blankets and dolls in the right places on beds.

I know they won’t be in those childhood beds forever. And even in ten years, when they still live in those same rooms as they are about to
jump
off
the
edge…

…they may not want me to check or tuck in.

So I’m not going to be lazy tonight. I’m going to check on them and kiss outstretched hands and sleeping foreheads. Even if I’m exhausted.

I’m going to take advantage of tonight because the distance from me to them (for now at least) is so very short.

I look into her eyes, the same brown of mine, and want her to tell me everything behind them: Her innocuous seven-year-old secrets about dreams she’s had and where she thinks the unicorns sleep and innocent thoughts sprinkled with anger about her baby sister invading her privacy. She keeps secrets about words girls say to her and what she thinks about God.

And I beg her to tell me.

She won’t. She says that she can tell me everything but she has to keep at least one thing secret.

I ask her what that one thing is, if it is a good secret or a bad one. (what will I do if she says bad? and my mind begins to race…)

Good, of course. Mama…I have to keep one thing to myself.

Okay, as long as it’s a good secret. Do you think you’ll ever tell me?

She smiles, and says maybe.

Because I’m already worried that the dialogue will close. That I won’t be able to say anything to her that she will trust or believe. I’m worried about all the non-innocent secrets she will have soon and that she’ll still keep them to herself.

I don’t need to know everything. I don’t need to know how many times she’ll be embarrassed by me or when she thinks that she hates me. I don’t need to know that when she’s twelve she might wish she was born into a different family.

So I’m trying to talk. A lot. And I’m trying to listen more than I talk and show her that I hear her. I want to be the one she tells the big secrets to.

And maybe one day, before she gets too old and forgets it all herself, she’ll tell me where the unicorns sleep at night.

When I was a kid growing up in suburban Southern California, visiting my grandparent’s farm in northern Indiana was like taking a trip to Mars.

It was totally foreign to me.

My grandfather grew corn and cucumbers, had barns, horses, cows. He had tractors and old trucks. There were fireflies, chickens, and the very best of all: land. There was land to run free on.

I have no idea how many acres he owned, but when I was a child it seemed like it had no borders. I couldn’t run far enough to reach the edges.

In California, in our modest home with our modest yard and one dog, and in a neighborhood that wasn’t exactly kid friendly, we weren’t allowed to run free. We stayed at home or in our friends’ house across the street but that was the extent of it.

But in Indiana, it was different. We made friends with the neighbor kids and ran barefoot under the mulberry trees so many times our feet were semi-permanently stained. We terrorized the hens, picked the prickles off of new cucumbers and caught miniature frogs in the hay barn.

By ourselves. Without supervision.

I don’t let my kids do anything.

Someone might take them. They might not know where I am. They might fall down and get hurt. They might not know how to get home. Someone might hurt them and I wouldn’t be able to protect them. They’ll get hit by a car.

I know its a little much. Some of it is overprotection, I’m sure. But most of it is the time we live in and where we live. And when I get right down to it, I just don’t trust other people.

This summer it has begun to shift with my seven-year-old. She’s been demonstrating enough maturity that I let her run into the park bathroom by herself while I stay with her sister on the playground. I let her climb on the rocks near the tidepools without me having to eagle-eye her. And today, I allowed her to disappear for 45 minutes with 3 other friends at the park to play in the “forest”. I trusted her. And I’m trying to let the leash out a little so that when she has more responsibility, she’ll know what to do with it.

Do I wish I had a hundred acres for her to run free on and catch frogs with sweaty, summer palms? Do I wish that we knew every family on our block so I’d feel safe with her moving all day between backyards and upstairs rooms? Do I wish I could give her the freedom to run to the edge of something and not be able to find the end? Yes. All of those things.

She’ll get there someday. But for now, I’m just going to let her ride her bike to the end of the block. I’m going to let her take a walk in the “forest” so that she can search for secret passages and fairies that her sister might scare away.

She has the rest of her life to run free. I’m gonna let her take it slowly.

Today she wants to be a princess.

A real one. As a profession.

Yesterday she wanted to be a doctor. Or a dentist/doctor. If there is such a thing.

This morning she told me she wanted to be a mommy when she grows up.

And she practices being a teacher when she plays with her friends, grouping everyone into student groups and telling them how to spell her name.

And when she’s all done playing grown-up, after the coming-in-from-outside arguments, after the please-cut-the-crusts-off-Mama requests, and after the I-want-to-butter-my-own-toast pleas, she doesn’t want to be a princess anymore.

Or a dentist, or a doctor, or even a mommy or a teacher. Her independent streak (that I swear she gets from her father) is gone, lost in a puddle on the floor next to the spot of her last tantrum, and she just wants to be held.

She’s all done playing grown-up and she wants to be my baby again. Even if only for a few minutes.

My ideas of friendship are constantly undergoing some kind of redefining. So much so that I can’t seem to fix a direct gaze on it. It is such an easy thing, it would seem, and it comes so naturally to some people. I had assumed that I had finally “got it” about friendship, but I still feel confused.

When I was a little girl, a friend was someone I played with at recess. We shared giggles about teachers or mean playground supervisors. I was the one who got ditched in “Ditch ‘Em.” But the next morning, so eager for acceptance, I would reach out in a juvenile friendship to the girls who had left me in the dark the night before.

As I got a little older I learned that girls who were friends told and kept secrets. To be a friend, you had to know something private and hidden. I was often the third, not understanding the inside jokes and longing to be told the Secrets. I understood later that secrets are something that everyone has and those same girls would have much bigger and scarier ones as they got older. Those they wouldn’t share with anyone.

In the horrible years of Junior High School, I found friends and clung to them with both arms, so fearful of being left alone, or worse, left OUT.

In High School we all learned about betrayal and just how much is too much to perpetrate on a friendship and still remain friends. There were boyfriend-stealings, public-humiliations, and the horrible gut feeling of finding out on Monday you hadn’t been invited to what had happened on Saturday. But in a school our size, you still had to sit next to her in English. And then you could laugh, and talk about the quiz on Friday while trying to forget hurts.

As an adult, friendship has taken many forms. Some have been unhealthy and selfish. Some I have used to seek my own benefit or just simply to make me feel good, perhaps attempting to make up for the lost secrets of my girlhood. Grown-up girls still play Ditch ‘Em in grown-up ways and adult sized betrayals often have farther reaching consequences than those when you are 15. I have both done the betraying and been the wounded in different friendships.

Others have been healthy. There have been groups that have enveloped me and loved me, scars and all, for who I am. The girls I lived with in college, the women I met at my recent conference…these clusters have given me a different sort of confidence in my ability to make friends – that being myself is really all I need to do and good people will accumulate themselves near me.

Some friendships have burst into brilliant color and closeness and faded just as quickly. Some have been forged over mothering, over long early morning runs, or over frozen yogurt and have kept a steady pace.

So really, as I am thirty-three and married and mother of two and have had hundreds of different friends over my lifetime, I still am not sure what friendship looks like.

Is it talking to someone every day about crock-pot dinners and toilet-training? Yes.

Is it waiting 7 months to call someone to talk but when we do it is as if no time has passed? Yes.

Is it being sorry about words said and wishing things could be taken back? Yes.

Is it still feeling left out because I wasn’t invited? Yes.

Is friendship being able to sit with someone and watch TV and laugh without having to have a formal conversation? Yes.Yes, yes.

Friendship is constantly being redefined, daily, hourly. Every new or old friend is her own flavor of friendship and I am learning that the only real living moves and breathes within relationships, regardless of what those relationships look like.

Originally published as “Redefining Friendship” on April 13, 2008)

I am really not ready.

I’m not ready to change my vocabulary yet. Or remove the step stools in front of the bathroom sinks. I’m not ready to take off the training wheels of my world.

She doesn’t want me to use the word “baby” anymore. My sweet, crazy-haired baby girl, the one most recently in my arms during the day and in a crib at night wants me to stop calling her my baby. I have to use the words “big” and “girl” together or she is offended.

She refuses a booster seat at the table, a stroller at the park and a child’s fork at dinner. She wants the independence that I find it so difficult to part with.

Doesn’t she realize she will always be the infant in a cradle beside my bed?
Or that her toes and hands will always feel soft to me?
Doesn’t she realize I still want to do these things for her: dress her in warm soft clothes, rock her to sleep and kiss her baby lashes?

Doesn’t she know I’ll cry when I walk away from her preschool classroom to leave her for the next 2 1/2 hours? When she’s painting wide stripes with blue and red unwashable tempra paint, I’ll be wondering where she is in the grocery store cart and missing her.

I guess not. Not until she has her own baby girl that she doesn’t want to grow up.

“When I grow up, I want to be a scientist, a horse rider and a travel agent.” I ask her if she really knows what a travel agent does. She replies that they travel, of course. I guess I probably shouldn’t burst her bubble that they really mostly sell travel packages to other people who travel. These are a five-year-old’s dreams today. And they will change endless times between here and then.

I was talking to a friend awhile back and she commented that sometimes you just have to be okay not to realize your dreams, that some things will never happen and there are many things you cannot change. This is true for many dreams, the ones that can’t be changed: things from the past or things far beyond your control.

But, then again, there are some things you can.

When I was a small girl, honestly, I can’t remember what I wanted to be when I grew up. I think it was a mix of dolphin trainer, zookeeper, and the girls that rode Shamu at Sea World.

When I was in high school and I began to read good things, I wanted to be a writer. I didn’t realize that a person must live a little life in order to be a significant one and to really write.

At my University, I should have taken the jump off the edge of practicality, safety and sureness and plunged into things that I was good at. What is the thing that sits in my soul and breathes? What fills me and exists within quietness? I should have studied writing, but I was too scared.

I made some sort of internal compromise and taught school. I loved it but it wasn’t my dream.

Is it too late to realize a dream? Is a person too old to begin something? I have been in writing-silence for ten years. Maybe its time to jump off the edge.