It’s time for Project 52, Week 12!

12 weeks ago, on my 52nd birthday, I decided to start Project 52 — for 52 weeks, I’m going to reflect on one year of my life.

This week I’m looking at June 1976 to June 1977 — the year I was 12 years old and in the 8th grade.

8th grade was SO much better than 7th grade! From the bottom of the heap — youngest at a new school, not knowing many people — to the top of the heap, at least of the junior high. (The junior and senior high were all in the same school, but there was some natural separation. Lunch and P.E. and chapel were all done separately — at least for most people.)

And 8th grade was the year I had every single class with my friend Ruth Douglas. And that was the year we really became best friends.

The reason we had all our classes together was that we were the only two 8th graders in both high school band and high school math — Algebra I. Because of the way our schedules worked out, we ended up going to chapel (once a week) with the high school. Instead of feeling very small because of this — this made me feel very big and important.

Ruth is a lot more outgoing than me. And a lot more willing to look crazy. But in junior high… hanging out with Ruth meant I did a lot of wild things (to me!). And it gives me a big smile just to think about that time.

It’s also the year I, to quote John Pavlovitz, “chose my heterosexuality,” and got a crush on a 9th grader in my math class that lasted until he graduated from high school. (But I eventually got another hopeless crush on a guy at church. The crushes could coexist because they weren’t actually based in Reality. Fun though!)

High school band, I’m afraid, wasn’t as fun as the year before. We had a new band director, Mr. Engel, and he wasn’t a bad band director, but he didn’t know how far the band had progressed the previous year by working so hard on such challenging music — and he selected much simpler music, which was rather a let down.

Mr. Engel did introduce me to a new flute teacher, Bev Matsumura. Bev had all her students perform in a recital every three months — so I got lots of practice learning to get up in front of people without shaking. Well, I shook less. It’s very embarrassing when you shake holding a flute, because the whole flute shakes. But that wasn’t enough to stop me playing the flute, like having to play in the piano festival got me to quit piano. I really enjoyed the flute.

And we performed at the football and basketball games as a pep band. It was so much fun to stay after school and go to the games! (This references back to feeling big and grown up. On my own for a few hours. Wild times!)

Oh, and sometime in junior high is when I grew to LOVE roller coasters. The picture at the top is from when Ruth’s family took me to Magic Mountain. That’s Ruth and her brother Tom with me. I remember the first time I rode the Revolution at Magic Mountain, that feeling of doom when we went into the loop and I went upside down on a roller coaster for the first time — and it was so much FUN! I decided if I wasn’t afraid of that any more, well then I wasn’t afraid of any roller coaster!

I still say that getting lots of chances to ride roller coasters in junior high — when you’re a little crazy just by nature — guarantees that a kid will love roller coasters for life. With Ruth as my best friend, there was no way I was going to hang back!

And I had more friends by then. Here are some pictures I took the day our whole grade went Whale Watching, while we were waiting to leave.

That’s Christine Van Aalst and Penny Cypert.

And then Lauri Ann Stone and Jennifer Schilpp. Those pictures (and others that didn’t come out as well) remind me that 8th grade felt much less lonely than 7th grade.

My pictures of Whale Watching aren’t dated, but I’m pretty sure it was 8th grade, because that was the year we had Science class.

Ruth and I were in 5th period Science class with one other girl, Karen Baker — and about 30 boys! The teacher was a woman, Mrs. Erickson, but that set-up was a little awful. Most eighth grade girls were in junior high choir that hour. Ruth and I were in band, and Karen wasn’t in the choir. So we were in Science class with all the boys. After awhile, we made a petition to Mrs. Erickson to sit together, and dripped water on it for tears. She didn’t even argue! She said, “I see your point.” and let us sit together from then on. (We took advantage of it and passed a lot of notes.)

I don’t have many family pictures from 8th grade. I realized when I was thinking about this post that in 8th grade, there were 8 kids in the family. In 9th grade, there were 9 kids in the family. And in 10th grade the 10th kid was born. (A google search shows that, just as I remembered, 1977 was when the TV show “Eight Is Enough” became popular. My Mom was already pregnant.)

Anyway those 8 kids the year 1976-77 were:
Rick – 15 in October – 10th grade
Becky – 13 – 9th grade
Me – 12 – 8th grade
Wendy – 9 in October – 4th grade
Randy – 7 – 2nd grade
Ronny – 4 in October
Jeff – 2 in October
Nathan – 1 in January 77

And okay, playing with babies was still fun at that point. Jeff and Nathan got dressed alike and were SO CUTE! We older siblings taught the babies to walk and to read and played with them. We seriously did teach the little ones to read. Jeff basically taught himself. He’d point at words and ask what it said until he knew. But watching that process was so much fun! All of them were reading before Kindergarten, and we were all in on teaching them.

Speaking of reading, 8th grade was the year our English teacher Mrs. Ossen announced that there would be year-long contest to see who could read the most books! The requirement was that we write a summary and write out the definitions of five words in the book that we didn’t know. I read a lot of Agatha Christie books that year — we’d switched to the big Torrance Library near my Dad’s work — and I’d use British spellings, not realizing they were actually the same word. I also read Gone with the Wind that year – Mrs. Ossen let us count it as two books if it was over 500 pages.

Yes, I won the reading contest. Gail Karber was my closest competition, but I read more than 100 books, and was pretty decisively ahead.

That was also the first year I won a five-in-a-row Tic Tac Toe tournament. The high school math teacher, Miss Royer, ran three pencil games tournaments at the end of each year. That was the first year I entered (the junior high tournament), and I got hooked. I didn’t win at Hex or 3D Tic Tac Toe that year — but I started my streak of winning Five-in-a-row — and ended up winning five Five-in-a-row tournaments in a row. (You use graph paper for an unlimited board. First one to get five in a row wins.)

Another thing I remember is that the summer before 8th grade was when I started spending an hour a day memorizing Scripture. I remember because I so badly wanted to go on the 8th grade History class trip to Washington DC. I was born in Washington DC! My parents paid me to memorize Scripture — and I earned sixty dollars that summer. But it wasn’t enough to go on the trip. But I did get hooked on memorizing Scripture, and that was pretty much something that got me loving God’s word. I’ve already written about memorizing, but that ended up being a wonderful thing in my life.

And sometime in there I started doing The Bible Fellowship — a daily Bible study program put out by our church. The Bible Fellowship is big on check charts — which suits my personality perfectly! But it did help me establish a daily habit of studying Scripture.

And apparently I still got together some times with Kathy, Abby, and Darlene. Here we are at Abby’s house celebrating Abby and Kathy’s birthdays (June 4 and 5) at the end of 8th grade.

And I just remembered one more thing about Junior High. Darlene still car pooled with us from the high school to the elementary school. I am sure of that because once we got to Junior High, we could buy candy at the Student Store. However — if anyone in the car found out we had candy, we had to share with EVERYONE. One of my favorite candies to buy was red hots and I would foolishly try to eat them secretly.

Darlene and I still talk about how Ronny would turn around in his seat and look at us and say, “I smell somepin!”

So, looking back, Eighth Grade was a very happy year — especially compared with Seventh Grade. I don’t remember as much about Ninth Grade — at least not yet. As I think about it this week, who knows what memories will pop up out of the woodwork?

It’s time for Project 52, Week 11!

11 weeks ago, in honor of my 52nd birthday, I decided to start Project 52 — for 52 weeks, I’m going to reflect on one year of my life.

This week, I’m going to cover the year I was 11 years old — June 14, 1975 to June 14, 1976.

The picture above shows our family in April 1976. Come to think of it, this would fit in well on the Awkward Family Photos website. Across the back is Rick, age 14, in 9th grade, holding Jeff, age 1; then Becky, 13, in 8th grade, holding Nathan, 3 months old (Yes, there was another birth in January 1976.); then me, 11, in 7th grade. Front row is Randy, 7 years old, in 1st grade; Wendy, 8 years old, in 3rd grade; and Ronny, 3 years old.

I got my own camera that year. Apparently we took a vacation and visited both our Grandma in Phoenix and our grandparents in Salem. I like my approach in taking this picture of Jeff and Randy in Phoenix:

7th grade was tough. Painful even to think about. I was lonely. My foursome from elementary school had been broken up. Kathy moved to Catalina Island — not far away but very inaccessible. Abby switched to a different junior high school. Darlene went to Brethren Junior/Senior High School with me — but we only had one class together in 7th grade, 7th period math, which was a full classroom and we couldn’t even sit together. I think we even had different lunch periods.

Besides needing to make new friends, 7th grade was when I began to get an inkling that my clothes and hair were completely out of fashion. But I had no clue what to do about it. Just felt wrong and different. I think that was about the time I was wearing a lot of clothes that were given to us from a family at church — clothes that were awfully dingy and old and completely out of fashion. To this day, I can’t handle shopping at Thrift stores. I like things that are New and Shiny. And it fills some hole to tell myself that I actually do deserve new things.

However — despite all that, some wonderful things happened in 7th grade.

For two of the great parts of 7th grade, the way was paved by my older brother and sister.

One of those was going a year ahead in math.

When Rick did it, a couple years before, it was a new thing at Brethren High School. My Mom had to push for it. But Becky had done it, too, and it wasn’t too hard to work it out my year, though I had a different teacher than they had, Mr. Kerby. But math class met in a room that had a back room. So Mr. Kerby let some of us go back there with a teacher’s aide and do ALL the problems in the book, at our own pace.

And I do mean ALL the problems. We had to miss no more than 3 problems on a homework assignment or do them over. I remember one very annoying long division assignment with about 36 problems that I had to do maybe 3 times before I got enough right. (I mean, I clearly knew how to do long division. But there were lots of places to make a mistake!)

We had fun in that back room. And that was how I got to know another lifelong friend, Ruth Douglas. I think Penny Cypert was in that back room with us, too (She definitely took Geometry with us later). And there might have been someone else? Maybe Laurel Yancey? (I’m just not sure….)

Anyway, I remember I spent my Christmas break finishing the 7th grade math textbook. So second semester, I got to take 8th grade math. And that did it! I was now a year ahead in math. (I still say 7th grade is a fantastic year to do that — 7th and 8th grade math is fluff to prepare students for Algebra.)

So yes! Even though my old friends weren’t around, I did make some wonderful new friends. These pictures are dated October 1975, taken at what I believe was my first of many sleepovers at Ruth’s house.

Here’s Ruth:

And here’s our other friend Jennifer Schilpp:

Another thing about 7th grade, for which my older brother and sister had paved the way, was that I was the only 7th grader in high school band. My brother was in 7th grade the year they started the band, and my sister had been in high school band when she was in 7th grade, so it wasn’t a stretch for me to do the same. Especially when you consider that I was also the only flute player. This was also when I began taking flute lessons with Mrs. Chapman, having “graduated” from Mr. Currie, the band director, who wasn’t actually a flute player.

Since that school year ended in 1976, the Bicentennial year, ALL the school’s music groups were going to take part in the annual May Festival, which was usually put on just by the A Capella Choir.

So — the band played some extra-challenging music that year. I especially remember “American Civil War Fantasy” — with a gunshot! Oh, and “Stars and Stripes Forever” — with young me as the only flute player. The entire band progressed wonderfully that year as musicians — and I personally know I was a much better player by the end of the year. The feeling of rising to the challenge was awesome.

We tried to find red white and blue material for dresses! Here are the only 4 girls in band that year, my sister Becky (clarinet), Denette Anderson (oboe), Brenda Perkins (bass clarinet), and me (flute).

We went to ACSI Band Festival in San Diego that year. All the other schools had *lots* more, much older flute players, which was quite intimidating, but learning the music so well was still a wonderful experience.

And here’s the band performing at a Bicentennial event in a park:

I’m going to finish with my view from my window, with my beloved jacaranda tree in the green leaf stage. I loved the view of blue sky plus green leaves — almost as good as when the tree was covered with purple flowers. There’s also a piece of crewel embroidery that I finished and actually got framed. (Many years later, I was delighted to learn to knit, because I didn’t have to get around to framing the finished product.)

Though seventh grade wasn’t the easiest year in my life, how nice to look back and see that was the year I accomplished some challenges, and even better, that was the year I made some more lifelong friends.

It’s time for Project 52, Week 10!

10 weeks ago, in honor of my 52nd birthday, I decided to start Project 52 — for 52 weeks, I’m going to reflect on one year of my life.

This week, I’m covering the year I was 10 years old — June 1974 to June 1975.

My birthday is at the start of summer, so during that time, I’ve got lots of time with my family. This picture with my baby brother Ronny makes me laugh. Baby brothers were fun to play with!

Our family now included Rick — 13 years old, 8th grade, Becky — 11 years old, 7th grade, me — 10 years old, 6th grade, Wendy — 7 years old, 2nd grade, Randy — 5 years old, Kindergarten, Ronny — 2 years old in October, which is when Jeff was born.

This year must have been when Aunt Susie was living in our house. There were a few years, I believe. (My Mom’s younger sister. My Dad’s younger brother David had lived with us for awhile in Washington.) Because I remember that when my Mom was in the hospital for Jeffy’s birth, Aunt Susie was taking care of us. And Ronny clearly came to believe that Susie was trying to replace Mommy. He wouldn’t let her touch him! So Becky and I had to change his diapers and put him in bed until Mom got back. Ronny was exactly 2 years old, so it wasn’t exactly a compliant stage to have Mommy disappear for a few days.

I was still delighted to have another adorable baby to play with.

Now, with Rick and Becky in Junior High, and me left in Elementary School, a conflict developed. My Mom believed that children should get 11 hours of sleep. We got up at 6:00 to make it to school — so we had to go to bed at 7:00 pm.

However — once we hit 7th grade, she stopped even trying to set our bedtimes. It was up to us.

So — the fact that Rick and Becky could stay up as late as they wanted, but I had to go to bed “the same time as the baby!” struck me as a horrible injustice. My defiance began by just pulling my curtain back and reading by the light of the sun outside (which was still up at 7 pm!). But after awhile, I started going into my walk-in closet, curling up on my sleeping bag, and reading in there with the door closed, so that the light wouldn’t go under the door from my main room into the hall.

I was never caught. It’s been suggested to me recently that I’m sure my Mom didn’t actually want to catch me. It was probably more about peace and quiet than about actually getting me to sleep. I felt vaguely guilty at the time (I was, after all, a rule follower) — but was so convinced of the injustice, I was unrepentant.

I do remember that was the year I read Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott. I remember looking at the clock and discovering I had stayed up until 9:00! I was reading the part where Beth dies and having a good cry.

And so began a long history of staying up far later than I should to read a wonderful book. I am still unrepentant.

6th grade was Mr. Knapp’s class! He was a wonderful teacher, and another one (like Miss Halberg in 4th grade) whom I loved whole-heartedly. Though his style was very different from Miss Halberg’s.

And couple of things Mr. Knapp did were especially memorable — Sword Drills and Language Arts Baseball.

Sword Drills were what we did for Bible class. (Because the Bible is the Sword of the Spirit.) He’d call out a reference, and you’d see who could look it up the fastest. He had a nice way of determining the winner, back in the day when we all used the same version. He’d say, “4th word, preceding verse,” or “7th word succeeding verse,” or the like, and whoever called out the particular word first would get the point.

But then things got more complicated — for more points. Instead of calling out a reference, he’d start reading a verse. We’d use concordances or knowledge to find the verse. Then he started using some of the same verses he’d used before. Those would be more like 3 points, rather than 5. I still remember that Eric used to hang out on the verse, “Come now, let us reason together….”

Yes, I had the most points at Sword Drills. But I had a very close rival in Daphne Sykes, who was FAST. Her fingers would fly. My advantage was that I could find new verses more quickly, so I’d get more of the high point verses. She was faster at turning pages and blurting out the answer.

It was extremely fun, and very tense competition. And we learned the locations of many important Bible verses — and definitely know the order of the books of the Bible. (That was the year I learned “General Electric Power Company” to remember Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians.)

The other big competition was Language Arts Baseball. It started with just a Language Arts worksheet that Mr. Knapp would send home at the end of every day. A set of words on top. Numbered definitions on the bottom. 20 words per page. You had to match the words with the definitions. They were hard words, even for me, an avid reader.

After awhile, he added Language Arts Baseball. The teams were the rows. One person would be up to bat. The opposing team would be in the field. Mr. Knapp would read a definition, and the person up at bat would try to say the word more quickly than the outfield.

My row, Row 4 won something like the first four weeks of the competition. Then Mr. Knapp decided to modify it to one-on-one. Only one person could be in the outfield, so the whole team had to be good. That week, we went down in defeat to Row 5, Daphne’s row. But the competition continued all year, and I believe Row 4 were the champions for the year.

Because of that competition, I remember that Kathy was in my row, Darlene was in Row 2 (which was also a rival row), and Abby was in Row 3. Besides Kathy and me, the other people in Row 4 were boys. When things really got tense, there were some recesses where Kathy and I spent some time drilling some of them on the Language Arts words.

Did I mention that I like competing? I thought Language Arts Baseball was SO MUCH FUN! I’m afraid, though, that I cried that time that we first went down to defeat against Row 5 — and Dennis laughed at us! And then I was SO ashamed of crying about it. But I was able to quietly go to the restroom with Kathy until I could pull myself together.

Some other memories of that grade are sparked by pictures. This one reminds me that I liked to bake. I had a Betty Crocker cookbook — I still have it — and one day when I was home with a flu bug, I decided to try baking bread.

This picture is from some sort of craft fair at the school. But it reminds me that I enjoyed crewel embroidery.

And here’s a picture from February 1975, reading to Baby Jeffy.

Hmmm. I’m clearly not reading a picture book, so perhaps I’m just reading while holding Baby Jeffy.

Oh, another thing I remember from 6th grade was Rawhide Ranch — and that Kathy, Abby, Darlene, and I TP’d the boys’ cabin!

We got permission (from Mr. Knapp!) to do it after the group hike, while everyone was in the Saloon having hot chocolate. I didn’t really do much — I was too nervous, so I was the look-out. But the boys never figured out we did it — which was surprisingly something of a let-down.

Alas! After 6th grade, Abby stopped attending Brethren schools, and Kathy moved to Catalina Island, and later to the Washington, DC, area. So this was the last day of our foursome. Here we are, my dear friends and me, at 6th grade graduation. Ha! Look at that! I was the tallest! We ended up within an inch of each other, but I was then only an inch shorter than I am now — I got my growth, such as it was, early.

Nine weeks ago, on my 52nd Birthday, I began Project 52 — for 52 weeks, I’m posting each week about one year of my life.

At my parents’ house recently, I scanned in lots of old pictures. They have sparked many memories. I was surprised to discover that for the year I was nine — June 1973 to June 1974 — I didn’t scan any pictures at all.

So I’m trying to remember that year without the benefit of pictures. I was in fifth grade at Long Beach Brethren Elementary School that year with Mrs. Becker as my teacher. My best friends were still Kathy and Darlene and Abby.

That was the year Ricky turned 12 years old, started 7th grade, and started going by “Rick.” That was very hard for me to adjust to! Becky was 10 years old and in 6th grade. I was 9 years old in 5th grade. Wendy was 6 years old and in 1st grade. Randy was 4 years old, and Ronny turned 1 year old in October.

But I believe that was the year I fell in love with the Black Stallion books by Walter Farley, so I think I’ll talk about them. And that way I can include a picture — of my Black Stallion books that I collected then — sitting on my shelf today.

I remember that my best friend Kathy did a book report on The Black Stallion toward the end of fourth grade. Mind you, I have no idea what books I did a book report on in fourth grade. But I remember Kathy’s — she did a stick-puppet puppet show of the match race at the end. I’m quite sure it was fourth grade because of the way the classroom was facing (the opposite of all the other grades I was in at that school).

But I remember that I had not read the book when Kathy did the book report. I must have started reading them that summer — and loved them so much! I had a sheet of paper in a notebook where I kept track of how much money I had and how much I needed to buy the next book. They were $2.95 each (for a nice hardcover!). And Man O’ War, based on a true story, was $3.95.

Since I’m pretty sure I started reading them the summer I was nine, it must have been my tenth birthday when I completed my collection. My parents gave me THIRTY DOLLARS for my birthday that year! We went to Pickwick Booksellers in the Carson Mall and I spent all that money on books. I bought the remaining Black Stallion books I didn’t have (except Son of the Black Stallion, which wasn’t there that day) and Man O’ War and The Phantom Tollbooth. So I must have bought seven or eight books that day. (I think my Mom paid any tax. They were generous.)

I did read them all out of order, since I bought them as I earned the money and as they happened to be at the bookstore. (Oh those days before Amazon and before ubiquitous computers!) I must have read The Black Stallion Revolts, one of my favorites, Book Nine, in the summer, because I read it during my nap and didn’t stop until I’d finished — five hours later.

[That reminds me, our Mom required us to take naps when we were home, for her own sanity (at least until we reached 7th grade) — but we were allowed to read during those naps, we just had to stay in our rooms for an hour. This is a brilliant way to encourage love of reading in kids. It also built my lifelong habit of reading in bed.]

Kathy loved the Black Stallion books, too. We got to be rather horse crazy — though later Kathy actually got a horse of her own. It was always just a fantasy for me.

I do have a funny story about Walter Farley’s books. Books 4, 7, and 11, are about The Island Stallion rather than The Black Stallion. Both horses were crazy fast — the books are about horse racing — but The Island Stallion lived in a secret island canyon hidden by cliffs, a descendant of horses the conquistadores brought to America. Only Steve Duncan and his guardian knew about the wild stallion.

I loved the first two Island Stallion books, but Book 11, The Island Stallion Races, is just weird. Aliens come and land on the island and they disguise Steve Duncan and transport him and Flame off the island so they can race and prove how fast Flame really is.

It’s a very strange book. I read and reread all of these books, but that one I only read once.

That’s the first part of the story. The next part happened in sixth grade. I was always a good speller, since, after all, I was a voracious reader with a very visual memory. But I remember one time I spelled the word “coconut” wrong. I had a hard time with it, because I was sure I’d seen it spelled as “cocoanut,” so that’s what I put down. My teacher actually laughed delightedly to catch me in a mistake! (He wasn’t the only teacher to ever do that about me missing a spelling word.)

Okay, now fast forward thirty years. I was reading all the Walter Farley books to my child. We got to The Island Stallion Races (which they liked a lot because they loved stories about aliens), and in two different places, I found the word “cocoanut”!

I interrupted the reading to shout, “I knew it! I knew I’d seen it spelled that way!” I felt so vindicated!

The moral of the story being: Editors, please don’t let misspellings get past you. Small children will be scarred for life.

Okay, back to the year I was nine….

That gets me thinking of other books I loved. The Chronicles of Narnia were tremendous favorites, other ones that I read and reread. I remember putting them aside in 7th grade, sadly deciding I was too old for Narnia. I happily picked them up again in college.

Another series of books I loved were the autobiographical books by missionary Isobel Kuhn. I especially loved Stones of Fire, which I got from our church library.

One of the books I loved to check out from the little Carson library branch on Avalon Street was Sawdust in His Shoes. I recently got that via interlibrary loan and reviewed it.

And that reminds me of another book I loved from that library, Pony for Keeps (I think it was called). I’m going to have to do the same for it! And that reminds me of other favorites, Come on Seabiscuit! and Little Britches, by Ralph Moody. (Both of those I managed to purchase as an adult.)

I also liked books with “Magic” in the title. I loved Magic in the Alley, by Mary Calhoun and Black and Blue Magic, by Zilpha Keatley Snyder. And the Edward Eager books! My favorite was Seven-Day Magic. But all of them are wonderful.

The first romance I read was Pollyanna Grows Up, in a copy my mother had once owned. I loved it so much! I later read Pollyanna itself. Those books are wonderful, fundamentally Christian, and unfairly maligned.

Oh, and Bambi! It’s nothing like the movie, not at all trivial or cute. Bambi was another one — along with quite a few of these mentioned — that Kathy introduced me to. Another animal book favorite was Black Beauty, though that one I’d had my own lovely edition since second grade or so.

While I’m talking about books, I’ll mention The Hobbit. I didn’t read it until 6th grade, but that’s another book I loved so much I remember where I was when I was reading it — particularly a time I was reading it on the way to school and had to stop right when Bilbo was in the dragon’s cave looking at the treasure!

Speaking of reading, fourth grade was the year I got glasses. I also got pretty frequent headaches by fifth grade. I know that glasses helped the headaches a little bit.

And in fifth grade I began playing the flute! That might have been the year I quit piano lessons, too — though it might have been sixth grade. I really hated competing in the piano festival. I’d shake. But somehow playing the flute wasn’t as bad. (Yes, I would shake in recitals, but gradually got better.)

But I know I got headaches in the afternoon and often had them during flute lessons, because Mr. Currie commented on them.

Now it’s obvious to me — I was playing on a cement playground for an hour at lunchtime in the bright California sunshine. Without sunglasses. Of course I got headaches!

My Mom said that an eye doctor once told her that her eyes were ten times more sensitive to light than most drivers. She always wore clip-on sunglasses to drive. I don’t know why we didn’t figure out I’d inherited that.

Now I never set foot outside without sunglasses. But it took me years to figure that out. And direct sunshine is one of the very quickest ways to trigger a headache.

I used to go into a dark room with my arm over my eyes. I’d ask my Mom to take my temperature. She’d look at it and say, “You’re not sick.” — So I’d have to go to school the next day. (The rule was that if you had a temperature above normal, you could stay home the next day.) This wasn’t actually a problem with school, since my headaches always went away in the night anyway. (It wasn’t until after my first child was born that I started getting multi-day headaches.) It was sometimes a problem for Sunday evening services at church — I remember times praying to bear the pain. But since I “wasn’t sick,” I had to go to church with the family.

But that wasn’t really all that frequent. I don’t really blame my Mom for not figuring out I had a problem — after awhile I’d take my own temperature quietly in the bathroom and not tell her when it wasn’t a fever. She probably didn’t even know how often I got them. And I didn’t know there was anything I could do. (I discovered aspirin in late high school.)

All in all, fifth grade was happy. There was a fun baby at home, great friends at school, an imaginative life with great books, and swimming in the summer. That’s how I remember it now, anyway.

And yes, now I see seeds of the Librarian I was later to become. Why’d it even take me so long to figure it out? In fact, some time during those years I remember thinking that I wanted to be a writer but wasn’t sure I was good at it and was wishing there was a job about reading books. Why didn’t I know there was a job like that? We went to the library often enough, but I didn’t interact with the librarians much. So I had to wait to discover what I was born to do.

Eight weeks ago, on my 52nd birthday, I began Project 52 — for 52 weeks, I’m posting each week about one year of my life.

This week I’m looking at the year I was eight years old, from June 1972 to 1973.

That was the first summer we lived in Wilmington, where we have an in-ground pool, so that would have been the summer I learned to swim. We didn’t take lessons, but basically figured it out ourselves. We’d already practiced in a smaller standing pool at the Carson house. But in Wilmington, we learned to swim before we were allowed to go “in the deep end.” Years of summers spent in the pool followed!

And — Fourth grade was the first year I had the entire school year in one classroom! (In Kindergarten we moved. 1st and 2nd grade was the year I moved up a grade. Third grade we moved.) It was the year that Kathy Morris, Darlene Sasaki, Abby Crilley, and I became best friends. I’m pretty sure that would have been the year of my first slumber party — the four of us went to each others’ houses. Though maybe when we were so young, it would have just been the first time I slept over at someone’s house. I did spend the night at Kathy’s and Darlene’s houses before the slumber parties started.

I remember probably the first time I slept over at Kathy’s house. I was feeling shy at the dinner table. We were eating hamburgers, and somehow in a shy way, I was holding my hamburger kind of under the table. There was a roaring sound — and half my hamburger was gone! Their golden lab, Sally, had seized the opportunity for a treat. I was so embarrassed! (They were nice to me about it. But I sure remember that incident. I’m pretty sure it was the first time I spent the night at Kathy’s house.)

Fourth grade is also the only year where the class picture is in the photo album. So here it is!

Kathy and Abby are the first two on the left in the back row. Darlene is on the front row wearing boots, and you can find me! Another friend I still have is Lauri Ann Stone, who is in the middle row, third from the left.

Looking at the picture reminds me how much I loved Miss Halberg! She was very strict (looking back, I think rather awfully so) — but she would talk with us at recess, and I’d pour out my heart — and I loved her.

I went to elementary school back in the days of paddling, and there were some rather awful incidents that year. But I was a “good girl” and was working on being a good little Pharisee and I never did get paddled at school. Speaking of being a Pharisee, that was around the time my parents started paying us to memorize Scripture. They started with different sections my Mom had typed out that we could learn, a lot from James. Eventually, it progressed to chapters. I remember my Mom decided I could earn $10.00 for saying Hebrews 11 and $20.00 for Psalm 119. I did those in 4th grade or 5th grade, before it became a standard 10 cents a verse for any chapter, the first time. Five cents a verse for a reviewed chapter, at least a month after saying it before.

October 1972 was the year I learned that your own mother could have a baby! Ronny was born!

Let’s see, our family at that time was Ricky, 11 in October – 6th grade; Becky, 9 – 5th grade; me, 8 – 4th grade; Wendy, 5 in October – Kindergarten; Randy, 3; and now Ronny.

I have long said that if you catch a girl when she’s 8 years old and put her around babies a lot — she will be convinced all her life that she is good with babies. I loved holding Ronny, getting him to smile, helping him learn to walk, all of it.

Here’s a picture taken the following January. You can see we still enjoyed playing with the baby.

And here’s one more picture, taken on “Grandma’s Mountain” in Phoenix still wearing the pink sweater my other grandma knitted for me.

Seven weeks ago, on my 52nd birthday, I began Project 52 — for 52 weeks, I’m going to post each week about one year of my life.

Already it seems very strange to me that I only lived in the Seattle area for four years. It was a lifetime at the time!

It especially seems appropriate to assemble this post from California, from the same place we moved to the year I was seven years old. I’ve been visiting family this week for my niece’s wedding, and spending some time at my parents’ house — which is still the same house in Wilmington we moved to in 1972. I got to go through photo albums and scan more pictures for the upcoming years. Of course, many of the photos I won’t post here — of the house or of church or other everyday things — sparked so many memories.

The picture up above is the first one I’ll talk about. If you look closely, you might be able to notice that the eye away from the camera is a black eye!

We had the appointment to get my seven-year-old pictures taken — and a morning before it, my parents were playing tennis. We kids were running around on the tennis courts. I was running from one side of the net to the other — and tried to run in between the net and the post holding it up. It turned out that the rope holding the net up was right at my eye level — and I got a black eye.

I turned seven years old on June 14, 1971. We were still at the house in Carson that summer, and I still played with my best friend, Karen Iwata. Apparently we went over to each other’s houses in the summertime, too.

Here I am playing in the bushes with Karen and our next door neighbor, Debbie Wardrop.

And that’s another picture of Karen and me.

In Carson, our house was so small that Becky and I shared a room.

Hmmm. I know most of the time we had these as bunk beds. Probably to make more room. Becky would hang down from her bunk and annoy me. I wonder if this was after or before that. The doll on my bed is Newborn Thumbelina.

And here we are in order. In July 1971, Ricky was still 9 years old, Becky 8, me 7, Wendy 3, and Randy 2. This would have been not long after Becky and Wendy both got glasses.

Here’s a very happy family picture playing Ring-around-the-Rosie.

And Becky and I were still bought matching outfits:

Third grade in Carson, I loved my teacher (the same one Becky had before me, and I think Ricky, too), Miss Kita. My best friend Karen was still in my class.

Miss Kita had lots and lots of “centers” in her classroom — things to do, games to play, great activities for when you finished your work. That was the year we learned multiplication. Karen and I tended to be the first people done — so lots of play time.

Then — in February, our family moved to Wilmington. We moved into the house my parents still live in today.

They were told that the local school wasn’t a good one, and we started going to Long Beach Brethren Elementary School.

I did not like my new class. Miss Kita was young and fun and her classroom was full of fun things to do. Mrs. Monroe was very old — and said that when you finished your work, you should work on multiplication flash cards. Well, I already knew my multiplication tables. Eventually, we worked out that I could read after doing my work, but it was a far cry from Miss Kita’s class.

When we found out we’d move, my friend Karen started playing more with a girl named Suzanne. I didn’t feel as included. Then we moved and the new classroom was so awful in comparison.

However — little did I know that two friends I met that year would last me the rest of my life.

I don’t think we were really best friends until fourth grade, but in third grade I already did some playing with Darlene Sasaki and Kathy Morris. Years later, when my husband left me and got himself sent from Germany to Japan, unaccompanied — I moved to Herndon, Virginia, where Darlene and Kathe live now.

I’m posting Project 52 — since my 52nd birthday, each week I post a reflection on one year of my life.

Right now, I’m at my parents’ house in Wilmington, California, and I had a chance to scan in some more pictures from old photo albums.

I chose a few more from years I’ve already covered in the first six weeks of Project 52, so I thought it would be fun to do a bonus post with those pictures.

Here I am as a newborn:

And here is two months old:

This next picture was taken at Grandma’s House in August 1965, so I was a year old.

The kids, from left to right are Ricky (3 years old), Me (1 year old), Becky (2 years old), Uncle Larry (4 years old).

I love this next picture because of Becky’s funny face, also taken in August 1965 at Grandma’s House:

From left to right, we have Uncle Allen and his wife Judy, then Aunt Susie, then my Mom holding me with my Dad behind her, then (in back) Aunt Donna, and Aunt Linda. The kids in front are Ricky, Becky, and Uncle Larry.

Still toddling at Grandma’s House, this one’s from November 1965:

And Sister Pictures don’t get much sweeter than this. I was 1 year old, and Becky was 2 years old.

Still at Grandma’s House, that same November visit:

Here’s another picture of 3-year-old me and my neighborhood friend Patty with our new cat Zeenie.

And here are Patty and me playing with Play-Doh:

Here’s another Sisters picture, this time with my little sister Wendy, taken September 1968:

This picture makes me feel vindicated. It was the family birthday celebration for my fifth birthday. Didn’t I say that I had gingerbread as the cake for that birthday?

Here’s a picture from our August 1969 ferry trip to Canada. This confirms that I remember Randy at least as being a real handful on that trip.

And here’s a picture of my first day of Kindergarten! We’re waiting for the school bus in front of our house. You can tell I’m in half-day Kindergarten, because I don’t have a lunch box.

The cardigans all three of us are wearing were knitted by my Grandma. I wore that pink sweater for years.

This next picture is of my little sister Wendy’s second birthday in October 1969. The story is legendary that she spoke her first complete sentence that day after I had gone to school, when she told Mommy, “Don’t put my blue dog on the sofa.” You can see from the picture how much I enjoyed her delight in the big blue dog.

And here’s an unusual profile picture of me, taken in October 1969.

Here’s a nice Sisters shot. Our Mom liked to buy us outfits that went together, but these dresses lost their bows fairly quickly. They were still nice dresses, though.

Randy did learn to walk early. Here’s a picture with him in December 1969, only ten months old.

And here’s a picture taken March 1971 with my sister Wendy in our backyard in Carson, California.

And the last bonus picture was from that same month, March 1971, also taken in our backyard. I had started wearing my hair in ponytails most days. (I thought it was very wonderful to use red and white ponytail ties with my red, white, and blue outfit.)

Okay, now I’m stocked up with photos for future posts! Stay tuned!

Six weeks ago, on my 52nd birthday, I started Project 52 — each week for a year, I’m going to reflect on one year of my life. So this week I’m talking about June 1970 to June 1971, the year I was six years old.

I’ve already got some of the perspective I hoped to get from doing this project. You see, I firmly believe that the years actually do go by more quickly as you age. When you’re six years old, one year is a sixth of your life, so you experience it as a huge amount of time. (What do you have to compare time to except what you’ve experienced?) When you’re 52 years old, one year is only 1/52nd of your life, so you experience it as going by much more quickly.

I’m already surprised by what a short, short time I lived in Washington State! I was only there for four years! But at the time, it seemed like forever. Because for me it was all I could remember, so it was forever.

And I was not happy about moving to California. It seemed so very hot! And dry! And brown!

Here I am with my sister Becky in front of the house we rented in Carson. (I didn’t know at the time that we were only renting it. I only knew we’d moved.)

We lived on a cul-de-sac in Carson. We still played with the neighbor kids. (I’d forgotten how many neighbor kids we played with until I saw a picture in Washington. After we moved to Wilmington, we didn’t get to know our neighbors.)

I like that in this next picture, I have my dolls in the swing. One is the doll I got the Christmas before. (I wish I remembered her name!) I think the other doll is Newborn Thumbelina.

Like I said, California was hot! We did fill up the wading pool often.

That year Ricky turned 9 in October, Becky was 7, I was 6, Wendy turned 3 in October, and Randy was 1 (2 in February) and running all over the place. (He walked well before he was a year old.)

I love that I’m swinging my doll again. I did love dolls!

We walked to school in Carson, a few blocks to 232nd Place School. I started first grade with Mrs. Onaga in the fall. They had me go to the second grade classroom with Mrs. Sizelove for reading after awhile — and after a couple months, they moved me into second grade. My Mom says I already had a best friend waiting for me. I don’t remember when I met her, but I do know that in 2nd and 3rd grades I had a wonderful best friend, Karen Iwata.

This was my first friendship that was a real friendship. We both played with each other at recess. We went to each other’s houses.

Now Ricky was in fourth grade, Becky in third grade, and I was in second grade. We all got there in different ways, but we were now just one grade apart.

Living in California, we went to see our Grandma Hatch in Phoenix more often than we had before. Here I am with Ricky and Randy climbing Grandma’s “mountain” in the back of her house.

And here we girls are by the fireplace.

Oh! I remembered another thing to talk about. After some church-shopping, which I hated, we started attending University Bible Church in Westwood. It was a small church in a beautiful old building on Wilshire Boulevard. Quite a few UCLA students went there.

So that was when we met Garth and Celeste Johnson and Jennifer Qualey. Some other kids came to that church at various times, but those were the regulars. And us. Mrs. Johnson was the girls’ Sunday school teacher for several years.

I mentioned I was a rule follower? My Mom taught us early on to take notes during sermons. I still do that. (Hey, it’s easier to pay attention.) I still remember some of the topics Pastor Whorrall preached about, though my favorites were when he’d do a Chalk Talk — He was also an artist. We went to every service offered, Sunday School and Sunday evening service and Wednesday night. I do have a lot of good memories of that church.

And so another year went by….

This week, I’ll be in California, so I hope to stock up on more photos of upcoming years. Next week’s post will probably not happen on Tuesday, since I’ll be flying home that day.

Five weeks ago, on my 52nd Birthday, I began Project 52 — for 52 weeks, I’m going to reflect each week on one year of my life.

This picture brings back lots of memories around Birthdays. Remember that Birthdays are super important when you are five years old.

My Mom had a rule that we kids didn’t get a birthday party until we were in school. And yet you see me having a birthday party at five years old, before I was in Kindergarten. That’s because June 13, the day before my birthday, was the last day of school and a Field Day at school. I think it was a short day, too. Afterward, lots of the neighbor kids came over, and I’m pretty sure some cousins, too, and they had cake and ice cream for me.

I was remembering that was a kind of special bonus because it was the last day of school and field day. I remember that on my real birthday, the next day, Saturday, we had a gingerbread cake.

I was thinking back if that memory could be right. I did the calculations. Sure enough, in 1969, my birthday fell on Saturday. It’s surprising what a five-year-old can remember when it’s super important to her!

That was actually the first and last birthday party my Mom threw for me. I was looking forward to having a birthday party once I was in Kindergarten. I spent my school year deciding who I would invite. I remember I drew a picture of my birthday party. You could tell it was my birthday because there was a flag on the house. (My birthday is Flag Day and at the time I thought that was the best thing ever. Okay, yeah, I still think it’s pretty cool.)

Once I was mad at a girl and told my Mom I wasn’t going to invite her to my birthday party. She gave me a talk with something about forgiveness and love your enemies. So I was considering inviting her because I was such a noble person.

But it was all a moot point. When Becky’s birthday came around in March, I don’t know exactly what happened (I do remember some chaos.), but my Mom decided she was never going to throw a birthday party again. Which decision was devastating to me at the time. (I was told that I got a birthday party before I was in school, anyway. Though I knew that was different, because I hadn’t gotten to invite my own friends.) But then we moved anyway….

As I thought about this year, I realized I remember a lot more disappointments than earlier years. I guess as you grow up, you start to learn you don’t get everything you want.

But there are still good memories. I love this picture of our family in November 1969.

That year, Ricky turned 8 in October, Becky was 6, I was 5, Wendy turned 2 in October, and Randy turned 1 in February.

That summer, we took a ferry to Canada — another country!

I remember Randy as being hard to keep up with on the ferry. He would have been only 6 months old, so maybe I’m misremembering, but he was the youngest to learn to walk in the whole family.

And in 1969 I started going to school!

My teacher was Mrs. Wirt. I loved Kindergarten with all my heart.

On the first day, we learned the song, “Like a leaf or a feather, in the windy, windy weather. We will whirl around and twirl around and all fall down together.” I use that song in Autumn story times today.

That might be a lunch box in this picture — no, I think my first lunch box was a Barn lunch box. It’s probably some kind of toy radio. And wait a minute — I went to half-day Kindergarten, so I didn’t need a lunch box yet.

And I still got more individual time with my Mom — I think of it as me and Wendy with Mom, since Randy was still a baby.

And I saw the very first Sesame Street! My Weekly Reader told about a new educational show starting up. Wikipedia says it first aired on November 10, 1969. I think I watched it in the early afternoon, just after getting home, before Ricky and Becky got home. I could already read, but I loved the show anyway. My favorite of all was the chef who was part of the counting videos and always fell down stairs with a bunch of desserts. I always acted that part out.

And we used to watch Captain Kangaroo, too! That might have been before Kindergarten. I do know I watched it with Wendy, and her favorite part was when the ping-pong balls fell on their heads. I remember two books especially being read by Captain Kangaroo. One was a book that my great-grandmother had at her house, Millions of Cats, by Wanda Gag. The other was Caps for Sale. I can still hear Captain Kangaroo’s soothing voice in my head when I read that book. And both are still wonderful for reading aloud.

But alas! I had looked forward to getting a Snow Day once I went to school, like my brother and sister had gotten the year before.

The only snow that fell that winter 1969-70 in Seattle — happened during my nap! That’s right — I remember looking out my upstairs window and seeing the snowflakes falling onto the green grass — and melting. By the time my nap was over — the snow wasn’t even falling.

And that was the year I heard a school bus driver say she hoped it wouldn’t snow! I made a vow in my heart then and there to never be the kind of grown-up who didn’t like snow. I’ve pretty much managed to keep that vow to this day.

These next pictures show that we were already in tune with the fashions of the 70s!

In fact, 1969 is the first year I remember knowing what year it was. The date was printed on the dimes we got for our allowance each week. (I know! So much money!) I remember how strange “1970” sounded and looked!

But 1970 brought the great tragedy of my young life.

One day, when I got home from school, Mommy told me, very excitedly, “We’re moving to California!” I went out to the garage and cried. I cried for my friend Karen to come get me. I did not at all want to move.

I planned from then on to leave California when I got the chance. That was another thing I managed to pull off as an adult. The way I saw it, California was way too hot and way too smoggy and way too little green. And it didn’t snow! (Remember, I thought that the “Big Snow” the year I was four years old was the way it was supposed to be every winter in Seattle.)

We took a trip to California before we moved and went to my grandpa’s funeral in Phoenix, Arizona, first. I met some of my many cousins I hadn’t met before. I remember being so surprised when cousin Craig called my Dad “Uncle Ronnie.” I think I also remember meeting Uncle Dean on that trip. (My Dad has eight brothers and three sisters. A couple of big families of cousins lived in Seattle area, so we already knew them. After this we would get to know the California cousins — with girl cousins my age!) I know I’d been to Grandma and Grandpa’s house when Grandpa was still alive, but now I think I was old enough to remember more and maybe they even let me climb “Grandma’s mountain” in back of the house.

Anyway, I had to leave my friends and my home in May 1970, with only a couple months left of Kindergarten. In California, there was no grass on the playground. And I wasn’t really in Kindergarten long enough there to make friends.

My sixth year was awfully eventful. A lot of memories I know were from that year because they happened in Kent.

Now I’m thinking of what I forgot to mention…. I may end up adding to this post this week (like I did last week). My best friends in Kindergarten were Karen Stewart and Beth Bell. But I’m not sure if they thought I was their friend of if I just liked them best. I know that I got to play at Beth’s house a few times.

But Kindergarten is also when I encountered a mean girl. A new girl, named Summer, joined our class in the middle of the year. She was friends with a girl I thought was my friend named Sherry. Or it might actually have been Karen. Anyway, one time I decided to sit by those two on the bus on the way home, because I wanted in on this friendship. And they pinched me, all the way home. Bad enough to draw blood in places.

I think that was the incident when I got the talking-to about forgiveness. I do NOT think I showed my Mom the pinch marks. I wasn’t going to invite Summer to my birthday party! But I might have ended up doing it to “repay evil with good.” Except that by the time my birthday came around, I lived in California and had a new set of classmates I didn’t really know yet.

Anyway, in California, the very next year, I made a true best friend…. Stay tuned next week!