Junior High sucked.

That's what I remember about seventh and eighth grades. Kids from several different elementary schools converging to be educated in six separate periods a day, with dress down P.E., combination locks and no outdoor recess to speak of, was way too overwhelming for me. Just the concepts of a before and after school snack stand and dances were hard for my twelve-year-old brain to get around.

There was too much information coming at me from too many sources. Combine that with the onset of puberty and you've got pre-teen John Hughes movie material.

I hated it.

Okay, there are a couple of good memories: Mr. Franzen praising my science report presentations as the most entertaining and informative he ever heard (I can tell you some interesting facts about black rhinos), getting to know girls who would become lifelong friends, and being introduced to real literature.

But the scale tipped far towards humiliation more than anything good. I have disturbing memories of face-planting in the gym while chasing a boy (do not ask me why I was chasing a boy, I still have no idea what possessed me to do such a foolish thing when it held so much potential for embarrassment), a fear of not having something to do during lunch break (i.e.; a group to walk around with and belong to), having my new pair of swishy sweatpants borrowed and ruined in P.E., losing my temper and storming out of a classroom after having enough teasing and being labeled (deservedly so) as emotionally fragile forever on, square dancing (holding random boys' hands? Seriously?), joining the basketball team without having a clue as to how the game was played, and a P.E./dance teacher obsessed with Steve Perry (Oh Sherrie, indeed) and Chaka Khan. The horrors.

So Wee One starts middle school on Monday. I have high hopes for her. I know it will still be an awkward time, but she has a large group of good friends and more confidence than I did at the age. I'm pretty sure the biggest anxiety will be learning to shave. But we'll get through that together.

That may be the biggest difference: parents who are able to be involved. My single mom did what she could just to provide for us physically. Wee One is blessed with a great dad and a mom who doesn't have to work to support her family. I plan on taking advantage of that to help navigate her through the beginning of adolescence as gently as possible.

Besides writing, I occasionally play with collage art for a creative outlet. This scene is actually a composition of six different pictures. One of the things I'm drawn to in doing this kind of art is making an entirely new landscape out of images from several different sources and playing with perspective.

Growing up I thought my mom was so tall. Like stilt-walker tall. I don't have many specific early memories, but I keenly remember staring up at my ginormous mom towering over me, her legs rising over me like redwoods, sure that she must be one of the tallest women in the world.

In actuality, Mom was 5'4".

One time I heard our elderly neighbor's landscapers and later noticed the leaves in our yard gathered into piles. I couldn't believe the nerve he had to send us a message by having his landscapers blow our leaves. Husband knocked on his door to straighten him out. As soon as he mentioned the leaves, the old guy, who had a bad heart and a false eye, said he was sorry he couldn't pick the leaves up, but he was just too exhausted after raking them.

A few months ago Wee One was waiting for the computer as I finished checking email.

"Oh Mom," she observed with tender pity, "you have a folder called 'Rejections'."

A few months earlier I would have looked at her with chagrin. How nice it was to be able to laugh and explain that I didn't use it anymore.

And don't get me started on going from complaining about toys strewn around the house to cherishing the sight of them.

It's all about perspective. Things can be perceived so differently depending on time, distance and attitude.

As one daughter leaves for college and another enters middle school, as I come to a startling realization of how old I'm getting when I find out Lance Armstrong is a year younger than me (I don't know why, but that one blew me away), as I heed advice and revise a manuscript or read books with exceptional writing, as I accept that things aren't always neat and tidy and life still goes on, I'm gaining perspective.

And wadda-ya-know, the view is so much clearer from the vantage point of an open mind.

When I was a teenager my dream guy was one who would read me poetry, wear glasses (the cute kind that barely hid the passionate man beneath), talk philosophically with me, and, uh, read me poetry. Maybe play the guitar. He'd have attractively rumply hair, wear sweaters, and have a boyish smile.

I was actually able to date a couple of guys like that. When I was sixteen I dated one who had the exact physical traits I described above, sans glasses. He read me Don Quixote, sung for no reason, packed a picnic for the beach, and yes, played the guitar.

In college I had a long term relationship with another sensitive soul. We traded journals to write in, he thrived on intellectual conversations, sketched, made me a stained glass jewelry box, and went with me to indie films.

But the guy I married was athletic (in basketball, especially), avoided plays at all costs, was a people person, and not much of a reader.

We had nothing in common.

He has never read me poetry. He's never written a song for me. He's never quoted classical literature.

And we just had our eighteenth anniversary.

Frankly, I'm glad I didn't marry one of the boys that I thought were knights in shining armor. The guys Hollywood said were out there for me, waiting for serendipity to hook us up. How boring would it be to live with yourself?

Because of my husband I enjoy watching golf, football and basketball. He has kept me from being a homebody with his outgoing ways, has had some influence in my athleticism (modest as it may be), and balanced my emotional side with his practical one.

In turn, after some initial help in getting him started, husband is now a voracious reader, enjoys plays at the Shakespeare festival, and appreciates the classical concerts we attend.

We've balanced each other out. But it took a long time for me to appreciate that. We married very young and I mourned not only for my lost youth, but for the chance to have my idea of Mr. Perfect find me. I firmly believed a John Cusack would hold a boom box up outside my window. Seriously. That's what I thought love was. A Hollywood story.

I like to blame a lot of my misguided beliefs on Hollywood, but the fact was, I grew up without a father, therefor, without a role model of what a real mate was. All I was left with was a fantasy man, an imagined ideal.

There's debate going on around the blogosphere about whether these "perfect" guys in YA novels (and yes, I have one in mine) are giving girls false expectations. I don't worry about that with my daughters, luckily, because they've seen that a man with flaws, with interests different from Mom's, can be a perfect husband and daddy. I have no fear of my daughters turning into Bellas.

Love isn't always found, but made.

Stories, film or book, are fantasy, something we all love to indulge in, and as long as our young women have real role models in their lives, whether they be fathers, uncles, or church members, they will be all right.

I admit, though, that at the end of Pride and Prejudice (Kiera Knightly one), as we sat in the theater while the credits rolled up the screen and tears rolled down our cheeks, I told Darling Daughter between sobs: "Do not expect a man to walk across a field in the predawn wearing a robe to proclaim his love to you. That is not reality."

We still watch it over and over, sighing at how perfect Mr. Darcy is, but DD has told me, when the time comes, she'll be on the look out for a guy just like Dad.

As a young teenager, I went camping with Kim at Loon Lake in Oregon. Laying out on the sandy beach I remember turning to teenage Kim and saying, "shoot me if I ever look like that", pointing at a woman crossing the beach who was extremely dimpled on the back of her upper legs.

My days are numbered.

With the rate I'm gaining cellulite, I can only hope Kim has developed a rabid anti-gun ethic in the past twenty-three years.

I also remember Kim's mom saying, "Enjoy it now, girls, this is the best your body is ever going to look." What?! That was horrifying! I did not have a great body in high school. For some reason I just thought it would be better when I was grown up. You know, at twenty-two, or something.

Maybe I thought I'd have more control over my choices then - be able to join a health club, buy my own food. Or was I counting on passing through a magic veil at twenty and becoming the fully realized adult I'd imagined?

I'd been looking forward to my grown up body, just biding my time in this flabby, un-toned thing I had to walk around in in the meantime.

Ah, the innocence of youth.

So here I am, getting ready to go on an anniversary trip to sandy shores, looking at myself from behind in the mirror, hoping that no teenage girls use me as an example of "what not to become" while I'm there.

La.

When I was four or five I asked my mom if any of the letters in the mail were for me. Yes, she said, and opened an envelope and read: Dear Steffie, we would like to offer you a job as an airline stewardess (that's what they were called back then) when you grow up. Please contact us when you are eighteen years old.

I couldn't yet read and so I believed that the piece of mail my mom "read" was really an offer of employment for me specifically. For several years I thought that was what I would be when I grew up. I have no idea why my mom picked that profession, I'd never said I wanted to be one, but I didn't question my destiny. My career was set.

I forgot about it as I grew older and when I was in elementary school my favorite thing to play was secretary (that's what they were called back then). I loved pretending to sit at a desk and perform tasks like carefully writing lists, making check marks, answering the phone and shuffling papers into neat stacks. Maybe it was the organization that soothed me – to this day I crave order in my home.

Yes, I had lofty aspirations.

The next thing I remember wanting to be was a writer. I did very well on essays in high school, wrote some dog awful poetry and started a story that now, twenty-three years later, is close to being made into a book.

I only wrote a few pages of the story when I was a sophomore. It was about a high school romance. Okay, yes, it was based on my real life experiences, which I thought were tragic and dramatic enough to become literature. I've kept some of the names, the football game, the dance, the mean girl, the disbelief that a hot guy (Troy from my book is waaay hotter than the dude I crushed on back then, though) liked me, which constituted pretty much all that I had written back when I was fifteen.

Many of my high school memories are crystallized in my mind. Maybe it's because I kept a journal that I've reread over the years. Maybe this is why I feel so connected to writing for young adults.

While the "coffee, tea, or me" gig never panned out, I did get into admin work (that's what they call it now) when I grew up. I still get a little thrill starting my morning with piles of "to dos" that I clear off by the end of the day.

And now I can also say I became a writer. Not because I have a book published, yet, but because I am determined to take the seeds of a story from my adolescent self and turn them into the fulfillment of a dream.

Wonder if there is some sort of support group to help you get through the weirdness of having your child leave 13 years of public schooling behind in exchange for almost total independence.

Graduation was surreal.

These ceremonies are supposed to be long and boring, but the evening sped by with all my memories of her growing up. It feels like a blur now...a sea of green gowns on the football field, the wind blowing, cameras flashing, hugs, tears, flowers.

She's done.

The reality of having Darling Daughter graduate didn't hit me until that morning and I got a little verklempt. I had to admit that my work here is done. There's very little left for me to teach her; that phase of parenting is all but over. She has to take charge of her life now, and as exciting as that is (and relieving!) it is also very sad. The tether is thinning.

If I wanted to have a good cry, I could pull out her scrapbooks and see how my baby grew. My sweet little baby, who didn't ask to come along when her parents were only twenty and naive, yet steadfastly stuck with us, welding us into a family unit.

She has always been called a polite girl. She was never afraid to go to nursery, join the boys in flag football, go to overnight basketball camp or EFY knowing not a single soul. She ate every kind of food we introduced her to, traveled long car trips as a child with nary a complaint, and fell in love with all of mom's favorites, from Ella Fitzgerald to Pride and Prejudice. Winning Best Personality in her senior class confirmed that others thought what we already knew, that she's sensitive and touches others with her sincerity.

Just as she tossed her mortar board in the air, I feel I'm launching her skyward; ready, with a lump in my throat, to watch her fly.