Because I’m creating a thirteen-year-old  character for a WIP, I was trying to remember the year I turned thirteen. What did I look like? How did I feel? What was my world like then?  I pulled out some old photo albums and thumbed through until I got to the pictures with the sepia tone–just kidding–only they did look more vintage than I’d expected.

In the first picture of that thirteenth year I faced the camera, smiling and with my arms behind my back. My skirt stopped above two bony knees, one with a band aid.  My hair was pulled into a ponytail with a limp scrunchy that had lost its snap back when I was twelve. I’d inherited my grandfather’s terrifying uni-brow, and I remember that until that year it hadn’t mattered.

For such a short time, perhaps only that day when somebody clicked the shutter, I was poised between two worlds–about to leave the tomboy behind and ready to try my hand at being grown up.

On the next pages I had two tweezed eyebrows, my hair was combed and fell nicely to my shoulders, I’d turned slightly to the side and bent one knee like the models. No band aid anymore and something was different in the way I smiled.

Do you have any photo of yourself poised on the brink of something new–maybe a thirteen-year-old at that same central moment? If so,  I’d love if you’d share the description.

About The Author

A native Californian, C. Lee McKenzie has always been a writer, but to eat and make contributions to children's college funds, she's also been a university lecturer and administrator. Lee's written and published non-fiction articles, both in her field of Linguistics and Inter-cultural Communication, and in general readership magazines. For five years Lee wrote, edited, and published a newsletter for U.S. university professors who were managing global classroom issues.  Read more about C. Lee McKenzie.

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