In the Midwest, it’s time for school. Traffic is a bit dense for students traveling to the university, high school, junior high, and elementary schools between 7 and 8 o’clock each morning. In Missouri, the weather is humid and hot, like the start of most school years. It’s not like the west coast, where the heat is just hot. Growing up in San Ramon was warm but not like the sticky, humid heat of the southern United States. Granted, it’s not Texas hot, but it’s warm enough.

                In San Ramon in 1988, it was hot. Hot for California. For San Ramon, it meant it was 88 degrees, which is ironic considering what year it was. That was also the year James and I started attending a new high school. Going from a high school with 150 kids to a campus with 2000 students is not fun. We lived in San Ramon for ten years, attending the same private Christian school. Elementary and junior high was in the same building on Vomac Road in Dublin. What’s strange to me is that the same building is still standing and is used for Dublin’s Elementary school students. It’s ironic that the building, constructed in 1960-something, is in disrepair, and it’s only last year that the parents decided to stand up and say something about fixing or remodeling the whole school.

               1988 was also the same year my parents divorced. We didn’t know the damage that our biological mother did to us. Not until she moved out and life changed. At first, we didn’t know what to make of it, but it was so much better that she was out of the picture. Dad knew how destructive she was, but we were teenagers and had no clue. James and I were apprehensive about visiting her, choosing not to as much as we were able. Her verbal abuse affected me for years, impacting me and every relationship from my 16th year forward. Dad moved us out of California right after the divorce was final, feeling we all needed a break and some peace and quiet. As a teenager, I wouldn’t have picked Northern Idaho as our relocation point, but he did.

               As we waited for the finalization of their divorce, we needed to start school, but not at our private Christian school that I had attended for two years and James one. All of our friends were there. Everyone we grew up with in the ten short years we lived in California. It felt like a lifetime. And leaving that? Leaving those people we knew, even the mean ones we expected to mean, felt wrong. Trying to start over? That was inconceivable. Or at least it was until it started.

               The first week at a new high school is tough enough, but knowing that the friends you might make won’t be seeing you again, maybe ever, is way more complicated than you think. That’s what James and I walked into. Jon, our youngest brother, didn’t need to because he was starting middle school and much younger than me and James. Making up classes in middle school is way easier than missing high school requirements. At least that’s what Dad thought – I think. At the time, I thought it was stupid to even start. But I was a teenager and knew it all.

                 After a less-than-fun few days of attempting to make new high school friends, Dad decided we all needed a break. Summertime meant long drives to Lake Del Valle, sandwiched between the hills outside Livermore. The drive to the lake was a blast. Lying down in the truck bed, the canopy side windows open, letting the breeze blow through. Seatbelt laws weren’t a thing, but in any car we rode in, Dad insisted we wear them. That’s why riding in the bed of the truck was the best! No seatbelts. We pretty much had the run of the bed, doing whatever we wanted. Often, that included making faces at other cars. We called the drive up the hill to Del Valle ‘tarantula’ road due to the tarantula spiders you could see crawling on the shoulder. A few times, we stopped, as did other vehicles, to watch the slow progression of these spider families.