thoughts on turning eight
Dec. 11th, 2014 02:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kareinaYesterday was my birthday—I turned eight years old. For the fifth time. Therefore I am inspired to type up what I can remember of where and who I was for all of my other eighth birthdays.
The first time I turned eight it was 1974. I was a skinny little girl living with my mother and little sister at 8611 Falling Timber, San Antonio, Texas. I was in the second grade, and this was our first year in Texas, where mom had moved because she hadn't been happy with the job prospects in her home town of Ewen, (Upper Peninsula) Michigan, where she had taken us kids after she had decided to leave my dad, who was stationed in Crete at the time. That was the year I got glasses, again. (I had had them when I was really little to treat a lazy eye, but then went without for a year or two.) I clearly remember that first walk to school after I got the new glasses:
"Beth, Beth! Those trees have leaves!" , I said with much excitement and enthusiasm,
"Yes, they have always had them", she replied dryly.
"Beth, Beth! That building over there, it has windows!" I exclaimed, with all the delight of a new explorer.
"Yes, it always has", she replied, totally unimpressed.
If only she could have seen how different the world looked with glasses, she would have been as excited as I. This was before Dad retired, and also moved to San Antonio, after which we got to see him on Sundays; he would take us on adventures, sometimes with the children of another family he was friends with. I have more memories of those adventures than I do of my day to day life in Texas, which is not surprising really—school doesn't change much from day to day. One goes to class, does one's work, reads every chance one gets, and plays outside during recess. Only glimpses of that time in my life remains in my mind now. I was a bookworm who didn't play so much with other kids at school, though I would put my book down if we had company. I loved hanging out listening to mom talk with her friends, and participating in the sing-alongs that seemed to happen whenever we had company. Mom regularly called me precocious.
The second time I turned eight it was 1984. I was taller and plumper than I had been a decade before, and I lived with my mother and little sister at 2704 Lovejoy Drive, in Anchorage, Alaska (the Barony of Eskalya). This is the house in which I have lived the longest—we had moved in the summer of 1977, and I didn't move out till April of 1986.
The reason I turned eight again is that I had decided when I was 12 that I never, ever wanted to be a teen-ager, and thus I would enter my second childhood early. Therefore, instead of turning 13 I had turned three, and counted on from there. The month after my second eighth birthday I got my Award of Arms from Kylson and Anne, the first Prince and Princess of Oertha, and six months later I became the second Princess of Oertha, reigning with Kylson's former squire, Sir Donnan the Truehearted, who was the first adult boyfriend I had had (he was 22, which, at the time, sounded kind of old, but I was in love and didn't care), and also my first polyamorous relationship (not that anyone I knew had heard that term yet, but that is what it was).
I was attending Alaska Pacific University, the first of eight universities at which I would enrol in my life). I had graduated from Steller Secondary school that May, and my six years at Steller had really had a profound effect on who I am. Steller was an open-concept alternative school aimed at self-motivated students who were interested in taking charge of their own education. We were a school full of "weird kids", gifted kids, and geeks (before geek was popular). 35 of us (of a school of 200 students) had formed an SCA household a couple of years before I graduated, which is how I found the SCA, and a number of us were still active in Oertha at that point.
I, for reasons I didn't understand at the time, was considered to be exceptionally weird, even for our crowd. (In hindsight the reason for this was my (then) uncorrected hearing problem—I was later told that I had tended to come out with really odd non-sequiturs in conversation, but I never noticed, since I was always responding to what I heard, which (sadly often) was not related to what was said.
The third time I turned eight it was 1994 and was living in The Barony of Winter's Gate (Fairbanks, Alaska) where I had moved that autumn to start my Master of Science in Geology. My boyfriend at the time was Khevron, and it would be a few months yet before I also picked up Ron (both of whom I was partnered with, and lived with, for the rest of the time I lived in Fairbanks).
I had lived in three different states and attended six different universities in the decade that had slipped by, playing SCA very actively the whole time, and "dating" a number of wonderful people in each of those places (if by "dating" one means meeting up with lovers at SCA camping events, or, in some cases, living with them). I was no longer considered quite so "weird", since I had hearing aids by this time, so conversations with me were a bit less confusing. I was still spending all of my free time that wasn't taken up by SCA and boyfriends (which was a surprising lot of time, really) reading (and re-reading) science fiction and fantasy books.
The fourth time I turned I turned eight was 2004, I was living in the Barony of Lionsgate (greater Vancouver area, British Columbia—we were in Burnaby) with my boyfriend Crian, who had gotten a one-year working holiday visa for Canada. We did a reasonably amount of SCA stuff considering our small budget (he was working at a book store, I was cleaning houses for SCA people and selling the occasional hand-crafted item), and I got to see my family fairly often.
One of my step sisters was living in Vancouver at the time, and my little sister, her husband, their new born daughter, and my mother were just over the border in Seattle. Crian and I were about to move back to Tassie, were he would enrol in the bachelor's in history degree program, and where I would enrol in a PhD in geology program, though at the point of my birthday my degree was still in the "letters of enquiry stage". We wound up heading to Tassie by way of West Kingdom 12th Night, where the King and Queen of the West gave me the Princesses Talon of Favour on behalf of the Princess of Tir Righ (who was slightly miffed that we weren't at An Tir 12th Night so that she could give it to me herself), in thanks for helping her with costumes for her reign.
The decade between my third and fourth eighth birthdays had seen me lose my dad to cancer, finish my Master's degree, take a certificate in Massage Therapy, spend a few years in the central West Kingdom, and then go to Tasmania to help out my mom and step dad as first his health failed and then we lost him to cancer before the short term move to Canada.
Yesterday was the fifth time I have turned eight, and I am living with my boyfriend David , in the Shire of Frostheim, in the Kingdom of Drachenwald (Luleå, Sweden). I am still active in the SCA, but Drachenwald is a large, very spread out Kingdom, and my budget hasn't included as much travel as I would like, so we mostly attend the events which are held in the three northern most SCA groups in Nordmark (Sweden), the furthest away of which is three hours south of here. Somehow we haven't yet made it to an event in the next group south of that (which would be six hours from here), and there hadn't been any events in northern Finland since I moved here, nearly four years ago. Since my last eighth birthday I have completed a PhD in Geology, did a post-doc position in Italy, and then moved to Sweden.
For the first time in my life I don't feel the itch to move somewhere new, even though it has been almost four years since I got here. I think part of the reason for that is the local folk music and dance group, which is one of the hobbies I have added to fill in the time that isn't being taken up by SCA, since we don't have events up here all that often compared to other places I have lived. I have always loved to dance, but Swedish folk dancing is more fun than most forms of dancing, and the music is wonderful to listen to.
In many ways I haven't changed at all, but I am noticeably thinner than I have been for any of the other eighth birthdays since the first one. While there are a few more silver strands in my hair than there had been, the overall colour is still brown, and I have had some silver since before my second eighth birthday. Besides, they are pretty. I am not reading as much as I used to, in part because we have lots of hobbies and we tend to always be doing stuff in the evenings and on weekends, and in part because I set myself a "no fiction in English" rule when I moved to Sweden so that I would learn Swedish faster. It has worked—I am reading Swedish quite well these days, but I am still not doing so for as many hours in a week as I was reading when I was younger.
David and I are "dating" a variety of wonderful people (if by "dating" one means they come spend time at our house, or we at theirs, or we meet up at SCA events), and life is very good. I am currently working at 50% time, which gives me more time to accomplish stuff, and that is good, but it does mean that my budget for travel is limited. Even so, we have decided to head to the Known World Dance Symposium in April, and I will be heading to Tasmania for a conference in February.
The first time I turned eight it was 1974. I was a skinny little girl living with my mother and little sister at 8611 Falling Timber, San Antonio, Texas. I was in the second grade, and this was our first year in Texas, where mom had moved because she hadn't been happy with the job prospects in her home town of Ewen, (Upper Peninsula) Michigan, where she had taken us kids after she had decided to leave my dad, who was stationed in Crete at the time. That was the year I got glasses, again. (I had had them when I was really little to treat a lazy eye, but then went without for a year or two.) I clearly remember that first walk to school after I got the new glasses:
"Beth, Beth! Those trees have leaves!" , I said with much excitement and enthusiasm,
"Yes, they have always had them", she replied dryly.
"Beth, Beth! That building over there, it has windows!" I exclaimed, with all the delight of a new explorer.
"Yes, it always has", she replied, totally unimpressed.
If only she could have seen how different the world looked with glasses, she would have been as excited as I. This was before Dad retired, and also moved to San Antonio, after which we got to see him on Sundays; he would take us on adventures, sometimes with the children of another family he was friends with. I have more memories of those adventures than I do of my day to day life in Texas, which is not surprising really—school doesn't change much from day to day. One goes to class, does one's work, reads every chance one gets, and plays outside during recess. Only glimpses of that time in my life remains in my mind now. I was a bookworm who didn't play so much with other kids at school, though I would put my book down if we had company. I loved hanging out listening to mom talk with her friends, and participating in the sing-alongs that seemed to happen whenever we had company. Mom regularly called me precocious.
The second time I turned eight it was 1984. I was taller and plumper than I had been a decade before, and I lived with my mother and little sister at 2704 Lovejoy Drive, in Anchorage, Alaska (the Barony of Eskalya). This is the house in which I have lived the longest—we had moved in the summer of 1977, and I didn't move out till April of 1986.
The reason I turned eight again is that I had decided when I was 12 that I never, ever wanted to be a teen-ager, and thus I would enter my second childhood early. Therefore, instead of turning 13 I had turned three, and counted on from there. The month after my second eighth birthday I got my Award of Arms from Kylson and Anne, the first Prince and Princess of Oertha, and six months later I became the second Princess of Oertha, reigning with Kylson's former squire, Sir Donnan the Truehearted, who was the first adult boyfriend I had had (he was 22, which, at the time, sounded kind of old, but I was in love and didn't care), and also my first polyamorous relationship (not that anyone I knew had heard that term yet, but that is what it was).
I was attending Alaska Pacific University, the first of eight universities at which I would enrol in my life). I had graduated from Steller Secondary school that May, and my six years at Steller had really had a profound effect on who I am. Steller was an open-concept alternative school aimed at self-motivated students who were interested in taking charge of their own education. We were a school full of "weird kids", gifted kids, and geeks (before geek was popular). 35 of us (of a school of 200 students) had formed an SCA household a couple of years before I graduated, which is how I found the SCA, and a number of us were still active in Oertha at that point.
I, for reasons I didn't understand at the time, was considered to be exceptionally weird, even for our crowd. (In hindsight the reason for this was my (then) uncorrected hearing problem—I was later told that I had tended to come out with really odd non-sequiturs in conversation, but I never noticed, since I was always responding to what I heard, which (sadly often) was not related to what was said.
The third time I turned eight it was 1994 and was living in The Barony of Winter's Gate (Fairbanks, Alaska) where I had moved that autumn to start my Master of Science in Geology. My boyfriend at the time was Khevron, and it would be a few months yet before I also picked up Ron (both of whom I was partnered with, and lived with, for the rest of the time I lived in Fairbanks).
I had lived in three different states and attended six different universities in the decade that had slipped by, playing SCA very actively the whole time, and "dating" a number of wonderful people in each of those places (if by "dating" one means meeting up with lovers at SCA camping events, or, in some cases, living with them). I was no longer considered quite so "weird", since I had hearing aids by this time, so conversations with me were a bit less confusing. I was still spending all of my free time that wasn't taken up by SCA and boyfriends (which was a surprising lot of time, really) reading (and re-reading) science fiction and fantasy books.
The fourth time I turned I turned eight was 2004, I was living in the Barony of Lionsgate (greater Vancouver area, British Columbia—we were in Burnaby) with my boyfriend Crian, who had gotten a one-year working holiday visa for Canada. We did a reasonably amount of SCA stuff considering our small budget (he was working at a book store, I was cleaning houses for SCA people and selling the occasional hand-crafted item), and I got to see my family fairly often.
One of my step sisters was living in Vancouver at the time, and my little sister, her husband, their new born daughter, and my mother were just over the border in Seattle. Crian and I were about to move back to Tassie, were he would enrol in the bachelor's in history degree program, and where I would enrol in a PhD in geology program, though at the point of my birthday my degree was still in the "letters of enquiry stage". We wound up heading to Tassie by way of West Kingdom 12th Night, where the King and Queen of the West gave me the Princesses Talon of Favour on behalf of the Princess of Tir Righ (who was slightly miffed that we weren't at An Tir 12th Night so that she could give it to me herself), in thanks for helping her with costumes for her reign.
The decade between my third and fourth eighth birthdays had seen me lose my dad to cancer, finish my Master's degree, take a certificate in Massage Therapy, spend a few years in the central West Kingdom, and then go to Tasmania to help out my mom and step dad as first his health failed and then we lost him to cancer before the short term move to Canada.
Yesterday was the fifth time I have turned eight, and I am living with my boyfriend David , in the Shire of Frostheim, in the Kingdom of Drachenwald (Luleå, Sweden). I am still active in the SCA, but Drachenwald is a large, very spread out Kingdom, and my budget hasn't included as much travel as I would like, so we mostly attend the events which are held in the three northern most SCA groups in Nordmark (Sweden), the furthest away of which is three hours south of here. Somehow we haven't yet made it to an event in the next group south of that (which would be six hours from here), and there hadn't been any events in northern Finland since I moved here, nearly four years ago. Since my last eighth birthday I have completed a PhD in Geology, did a post-doc position in Italy, and then moved to Sweden.
For the first time in my life I don't feel the itch to move somewhere new, even though it has been almost four years since I got here. I think part of the reason for that is the local folk music and dance group, which is one of the hobbies I have added to fill in the time that isn't being taken up by SCA, since we don't have events up here all that often compared to other places I have lived. I have always loved to dance, but Swedish folk dancing is more fun than most forms of dancing, and the music is wonderful to listen to.
In many ways I haven't changed at all, but I am noticeably thinner than I have been for any of the other eighth birthdays since the first one. While there are a few more silver strands in my hair than there had been, the overall colour is still brown, and I have had some silver since before my second eighth birthday. Besides, they are pretty. I am not reading as much as I used to, in part because we have lots of hobbies and we tend to always be doing stuff in the evenings and on weekends, and in part because I set myself a "no fiction in English" rule when I moved to Sweden so that I would learn Swedish faster. It has worked—I am reading Swedish quite well these days, but I am still not doing so for as many hours in a week as I was reading when I was younger.
David and I are "dating" a variety of wonderful people (if by "dating" one means they come spend time at our house, or we at theirs, or we meet up at SCA events), and life is very good. I am currently working at 50% time, which gives me more time to accomplish stuff, and that is good, but it does mean that my budget for travel is limited. Even so, we have decided to head to the Known World Dance Symposium in April, and I will be heading to Tasmania for a conference in February.