Meditações - a staring contest with the minute hand...

Joy in New Beginnings

If you would have told me my world was going to be flipped upside down in aisle B9 of a

furniture store, I wouldn’t believe you, but I should.

Contrary to belief, picking out pillows for the new living room can be interesting. Shelves upon

shelves of pillows were stacked on either side of the aisle and as I run my fingers along all the

pillows, feeling the different texture of cotton, fur, and silk, I think about the sweetest of dreams

I could have if I sank into the cart at the end of the aisle labeled “clearance.” Standing next to the

cart, I pick up the smallest one hiding in the crevasse of the bin, grip the side, and throw it down

the aisle, watching the pink and yellow tassels hanging from the sides dance into the hands of my

best friend, Hannah, shouting “touch down!” so loud the old lady looking at bathroom towels a

few feet away, glaring at us, the fifteen year olds, like we were five.

With a quick sorry to the woman, we giggled as we put the pillow back on a random shelf and

got back on task to finding the perfect summer pillow for Hannah’s mother to add to her sofa. As

I reached for a cream colored, perfectly square cushion with a bright yellow bumblebee

embroidered on the front to ask for Hannah’s opinion, her phone started buzzing. “Which boy is

knocking on your door today?” I joked but soon realized her face had gone pale and her eyes

were glued to the screen on her phone. Before I even had the chance to ask what she was looking

at, she tilted her phone just enough for me to see and that’s when my among all the dreamiest

pillows I had ever laid eyes on, my nightmare began.

It was a single post on a social media platform that changed the entire outcome of my high

school career and ultimately, my direction in life. Little did I know that as I stared motionless

into Hannah’s phone, illuminating a picture of my biggest secret I had managed to keep from

everyone, was there for all to see. Not even a blink of an eye could wake me from this nightmare.

If I could remember everything that happened between setting foot on the cold concrete outside

the store as we rushed home in Hannah’s car and the first day of calculus class surrounded by

unfamiliar faces, I would tell you. The painful drive back to my house, collapsing into my

mother’s tired arms, repeating my story to countless officers and searching for the truth became

an exhaustive memory not worth keeping anymore. As much as I was able to flush out the

incident, it wouldn’t change that my peers remembered and still had screenshots of what

happened deep inside their camera roles. The school wasn’t willing to enforce consequences and

the police officers had nothing more to say than to gently encourage I transfer to a different

school. So, that’s what I did. New school. New me.

In a high school with five distinct buildings, I had to pay extra attention on the tour I had just a

week before classes began so I could retrace my steps back to my first period class. Peeking my

head into the classroom, I found nobody else but an older gentleman who could be Albert

Einstein’s doppelgänger. I took a minute to admire his thinning white hair with a matching

mustache before softly interrupting his focus of what looked like a million emails he hadn’t

opened yet on his computer screen. “Is this the calculus classroom?’ is all I could muster to

squeak out. His twinkling eyes switched their attention to me as he youthfully jumped up from

his desk chair and introduced himself as Mr. Yoder. He showed me to my assigned seat without

me even having to tell him my name - perks of being the new girl. I took a seat and watched him

return to his computer as I pulled out my pencil case and notebook, eagerly waiting for other

students to walk in and ease the awkwardness I felt. “Early bird gets the worm,” I heard him say.

I cleared my throat before saying, “I’m sorry, what was that?” He turned towards me and

chuckled, “Early bird gets the worm. You’re thirty minutes early for class.” He must have seen

how bright my face got as he quickly reassured me that I could stay and even added that he liked

the company. I must have been so distracted by the complicated campus map and class schedule

on my tour that I had tuned out simple details, including when school actually started. I shifted

my eyes to the clock that was hanging over the door I had come in and got into a staring contest

with the minute hand. Unlike how I was able to make pillow shopping interesting, watching a

clock simply is that boring.

My mind began to wander as I wiggled my toes inside the straps of my leather sandals. I had no

idea how students at this school dressed, failing to mention that it is a private school where kids

my age go because their academics are deemed superior or their fathers wanted them to fulfill the

family name, not because their social media account was hacked. I decided on a blush pink loose

blouse, medium wash bluejeans, and a pair of well-loved sandals that probably should have been

tossed years ago. Before I could shuffle the things in my backpack to grab my cellphone to tell

my grandfather to come pick me up so we could wait together until the time of class was closer,

another student walked in with their head down, concentrated on a text they were drafting. The

student was a boy my age wearing Converse high top sneakers, khaki pants

with a hole in the knee cap with a black t-shirt with “Elton John” written in all caps on the front.

Soon after him a girl walked in dressed with what looked to be the school’s soccer team uniform.

I looked at my reflection in the blank white board to my right. “Dressed to perfection,” I

whispered.

Arriving early to calculus class started as an accident and transitioned to getting help for my

sinking grade and again shifting to the sole purpose of spending more time in my favorite

classroom next to the teacher that taught me more than just how to use the quadratic formula.

Transferring to a different school wan’t running from my past, but rather providing myself with

the opportunity to redefine who I was. I knew that all along but just needed someone like Mr.

Yoder to give me a little push. He never knew the whole story of what had happened to me, but

didn’t need to. He saw how lost and broken I felt on my first day but could also see the light

shining from within me. I was beyond disappointed having to switch schools but it gave me the

chance to step back and think about who I wanted to be and what was important to me.

By the end of senior year, Mr. Yoder and I performed together in chapel. He sat next to me

playing his old six string as I stood in front of the entire school, looking into the pews now filled

of not unfamiliar faces, but friends and teachers who quickly became my biggest supporters.

With sweaty palms I gripped the microphone and gave Mr. Yoder a quick smile before singing an

aged folk song about new beginnings. The lyrics, “So you should hold my hand while everything

blows away and we’ll run away to a brand new sun” still echoes in my heart today. New

beginnings are something to rejoice in and that’s what Mr. Yoder showed me

Abby Morgan