Wyl Staedtler
Jan 5th, 2006, 10:54:46 PM
Note: I'm exhausted. This isn't how I wanted this to turn out, but I'm too tired to care, and I feel a lot better so sod it.
JANUARY FIFTH.
It reads like a death sentence. I always awake on this day feeling slightly hazy without knowing why, as if my body and my brain are keeping separate day planners. I may even write the date, to head a paper or to note a ledger, before it dawns on me what it means and I am left knocked dizzyingly into something like surprise. I suspect that when this happens I must resemble a fish, gasping silently and blinking so as to bring the water back.
On January 5th, 1778 Richmond, Virginia was burned by the British. In 1914, Ford introduced the eight-hour workday. In 1933 the Golden Gate Bridge began to be built. Snoopy stood up for the first time in 1956. Sonny Bono died in 1998. And in 1999, you were born.
What is a bridge or a fire, or a death compared to you?
In the beginning, when you were very young, we were nigh on inseparable. Except for school (me) and Dora the Explorer (you), there was nothing more important than being together for the sake of being together. Even twelve years between us couldn’t change the fact that I was enraptured by you and you were enamored with me. This is the way of sisters, I suppose. Reading storybooks, swinging on swings, braiding your hair; you were a source of peace for me in a place that dimmed a little every day.
Of course, you were too young to remember. But I was there.
I was there the first time you used sign language, asking me with the knocking together of two chubby fists to slide you down the banister ‘again’. I was there when you stood on your own for the first time, grinning at me until I yelled for our mother and your father to come and see. I was there when you crawled, when you walked, when you ran. I was there when you fell against the coffee table, splitting your head, and I was there when you came home from the hospital to show me the staple nestled in your blonde curls.
I know every story, every smile, every scratch of those first three years.
I remember running with you in my arms and the way time stopped when I tripped and you went tumbling onto the sidewalk. It scares me still to think of your little hands, scraped and bleeding, and your face poised to cry while I slowly had a heart attack.
I remember the way you waited for me to come home from school so you could race across the living room and kamikaze into my legs.
I remember your endless questions. How come? What for? Why? Why? Why?
The little things too, like the way you called hot cocoa ‘tea chocolate’, or the exact tilt of your head when you smiled cheesily for a camera.
It is hard then to think that you, The World, don’t know me. You know that I am your sister, and I am sure that you have pictures of me but it is a connection made only because It’s Been Told To You. You don’t remember me putting makeup on you, or dancing with you, or calling you a weasel. I am a face and a story told by grownups.
And I must confess, little one, that it is easier to not think of you now. I sometimes go whole months without tossing you a single second.
Except today.
I find myself crying with only the vague explanation that you are somehow with me on this day. It is a difficult thing to grieve for a person still alive. I weep over the baby that I knew because she is gone; you are a little girl foreign to me, and no matter how much you are loved, time will always pass. You will always grow older, and further away.
There is a drawer of letters to you that I have started but never sent. I can’t seem to find anything to say.
There is a drawer of letters from you filled with sentences. I turned five. This is my cat. I love you. XXXOOOXO.
Perhaps one day we will see each other again, will talk over coffee, will joke over the phone. Perhaps one day I will be able to tell you that it wasn’t your fault that I left, that it had nothing to do with you, that you were the one reason I had to stay and that it was me who wasn’t enough, and not you. But until then, know this: I loved you. I existed in your life, and you were loved.
January 5th. You are seven, and you are much more than a bridge or a fire or a precedent.
You are seven and you are everything good.
Happy birthday.
JANUARY FIFTH.
It reads like a death sentence. I always awake on this day feeling slightly hazy without knowing why, as if my body and my brain are keeping separate day planners. I may even write the date, to head a paper or to note a ledger, before it dawns on me what it means and I am left knocked dizzyingly into something like surprise. I suspect that when this happens I must resemble a fish, gasping silently and blinking so as to bring the water back.
On January 5th, 1778 Richmond, Virginia was burned by the British. In 1914, Ford introduced the eight-hour workday. In 1933 the Golden Gate Bridge began to be built. Snoopy stood up for the first time in 1956. Sonny Bono died in 1998. And in 1999, you were born.
What is a bridge or a fire, or a death compared to you?
In the beginning, when you were very young, we were nigh on inseparable. Except for school (me) and Dora the Explorer (you), there was nothing more important than being together for the sake of being together. Even twelve years between us couldn’t change the fact that I was enraptured by you and you were enamored with me. This is the way of sisters, I suppose. Reading storybooks, swinging on swings, braiding your hair; you were a source of peace for me in a place that dimmed a little every day.
Of course, you were too young to remember. But I was there.
I was there the first time you used sign language, asking me with the knocking together of two chubby fists to slide you down the banister ‘again’. I was there when you stood on your own for the first time, grinning at me until I yelled for our mother and your father to come and see. I was there when you crawled, when you walked, when you ran. I was there when you fell against the coffee table, splitting your head, and I was there when you came home from the hospital to show me the staple nestled in your blonde curls.
I know every story, every smile, every scratch of those first three years.
I remember running with you in my arms and the way time stopped when I tripped and you went tumbling onto the sidewalk. It scares me still to think of your little hands, scraped and bleeding, and your face poised to cry while I slowly had a heart attack.
I remember the way you waited for me to come home from school so you could race across the living room and kamikaze into my legs.
I remember your endless questions. How come? What for? Why? Why? Why?
The little things too, like the way you called hot cocoa ‘tea chocolate’, or the exact tilt of your head when you smiled cheesily for a camera.
It is hard then to think that you, The World, don’t know me. You know that I am your sister, and I am sure that you have pictures of me but it is a connection made only because It’s Been Told To You. You don’t remember me putting makeup on you, or dancing with you, or calling you a weasel. I am a face and a story told by grownups.
And I must confess, little one, that it is easier to not think of you now. I sometimes go whole months without tossing you a single second.
Except today.
I find myself crying with only the vague explanation that you are somehow with me on this day. It is a difficult thing to grieve for a person still alive. I weep over the baby that I knew because she is gone; you are a little girl foreign to me, and no matter how much you are loved, time will always pass. You will always grow older, and further away.
There is a drawer of letters to you that I have started but never sent. I can’t seem to find anything to say.
There is a drawer of letters from you filled with sentences. I turned five. This is my cat. I love you. XXXOOOXO.
Perhaps one day we will see each other again, will talk over coffee, will joke over the phone. Perhaps one day I will be able to tell you that it wasn’t your fault that I left, that it had nothing to do with you, that you were the one reason I had to stay and that it was me who wasn’t enough, and not you. But until then, know this: I loved you. I existed in your life, and you were loved.
January 5th. You are seven, and you are much more than a bridge or a fire or a precedent.
You are seven and you are everything good.
Happy birthday.