The Way Things Are the Same

2007

This is back when we used to watch the New Year’s Countdown together, as a family. I’m not tired tonight. True, it’s nearing midnight, but we are a little family of night owls. My mother believes in reading before bed, always, always, always. She read Little House on the Prairie first, all seven books, and then when John decided those kinds of stories were too girlish, she read Harry Potter, The Golden Compass, and now we’re on the fourth book of Fablehaven. On nights when my father can spare himself, he reads the Eragon books, Eragon, Eldest, Brisingr, and now Inheritance. We’ve become so well-versed in fantasy worlds that we don’t dream, for all the dreams we need are in those books, and in our parents’ voices, rumbling the room late into the night. We don’t notice, as children, that it might be strange that we share a room. Even now that John is twelve, he doesn’t realize that perhaps in addition to Laura Ingalls Wilder, the cotton candy pink room he sleeps in might be strange for a boy his age, too, or that perhaps it’s odd that his feet hang off the trundle bed rolled beneath my twin.

So I’m not tired. It is 11:59 pm on December 31st, and I’m not tired. And because I’m not tired, I watch my parents at the moment the silver ball drops and Ryan Seacrest shouts, “HAPPY NEW YEAR!” as they lean in, as one, and kiss. My mother, sitting on my father’s lap, her back resting against his chest, his arm slung around her waist. Her head turned just so, their eyes closed, lips touching.

2008

My mother is pregnant with Thomas. John and I are sitting silent at the old table, mac n’ cheese, carrot sticks, and chicken nuggets from Aldi’s frozen food aisle untouched on our plates. We are young. God, I am only five. Less than an hour ago I was sharing a tub with my brother and squeezing green apple scented 2-in-1 shampoo into his palm. I am egocentric. I no longer notice the scar from my surgery on my ribs, but every month when the hospital bill arrives, my parents remember.

My father’s dinner chair is broken, the wood splintered. The front door slams on his way out. He is going to chop logs for the fire, and he won’t be back to kiss me goodnight. My mother’s eyes flash, and she snaps, telling us to go brush our teeth. It takes some effort to get the tube to cough up what’s left of the toothpaste.

4 Summers Ago

We are idling at the dock. The Ecky Jane’s bimini-top is up, it’s sweltering out, and now the E in her name is starting to come unglued, just as the B before it. The boat’s engine is off, and although John is strong enough now to rev it to life, we are frozen. The only movements aside from the current ripping the tide to shreds are the sweat beads trickling down my back, and, I suppose, the E, peeling like a hangnail away from the boat’s metal frame. I am fifteen. My own feelings matter so little to me these days.

My father, not far enough away. His colleagues in Afghanistan have been killed by the Taliban. He is on the phone with someone’s wife. My father, trembling in the door of the truck, arms laced around my mother’s waist, his face buried in her stomach. Her hand rubbing his back through his t-shirt, her lips tasting salt on his scalp.

Last Year

The cotton candy pink walls have been painted over with blue. The trundle is gone, the twin is gone. John is gone, and he won’t be back until summer. I’ve switched on the window unit and both fans to full blast and I am playing classical music in the background and I am reading Percy Jackson to Thomas and we are side by side on the full. It’s not enough. It never is enough. We can still hear my mother screaming. We can still hear my father shouting back, “I AM NOT YELLING AT YOU.”

Me, wishing they’d just get a fucking divorce. Me, rubbing Thomas’s back through his t- shirt. He has his own shirts, but he wears mine, just as I wore John’s. The hole in the armpit is from the washing machine. The hole in the collar is from the dog.

Two Nights Ago

I am not tired. I have practice in the morning, but I won’t be able to make myself sleep until later. Some habits are hard to break. The girl in the dorm next to mine steps into the hallway. She is wrapped in a towel, and she doesn’t look down as she bypasses me for the bathroom. The first time she saw me out here, I was shaking against the cinderblocks, face puffed out from the pressure of squeezing my eyelids together against a barrage. Acidic. She asked me if I needed anything, because “two in the morning if awfully late to be in the hallway alone.” Needless to say, I wasn’t tired then, either.

Me, facetiming home. I need them. College certainly hasn’t been what I expected. I call and they answer on the second ring. They are together on the loveseat, sides pressed together, arguing about who should hold the phone and at what angle. Dad is doing an impression of Grandma that makes us laugh so hard it hurts. Mom is reaching across him for her wine glass. I am telling them about today, the girls, practice.

I am changing here, and I can’t tell if for the better or for the worse. They see it, too, I can tell. What I can’t tell is what they think of this me. I say, “no, they still won’t talk to me. I don’t think they ever will,” and I know they’re hearing, “yes, I made a mistake and I’ve taken my licks for it. They’ll treat me as they will, and, slowly, I’m settling into it.”

Me, then, was someone else. Someone shortsighted in her Depression. It’s still there, of course, and I still worry about Thomas and John, and sometimes I still can’t tell if marriage is something they do because they want to or because they’ve been doing it so long now that they’re codependent. Me, then, was someone at once boisterous and meek, someone bubbling and stagnant, someone galloping along on a big, tall horse but also self-deprecating to the point of an inward-turning knife. I was a child. I still am, I often think, too young for boys, too young for money, too young for that, and too young for the BIG FUCKING PICTURE. But when won’t I be? My mother still reads children’s fantasy when Thomas asks her to, still makes frozen chicken nuggets, although these ones are from Wegman’s, so it’s not quite the same thing. My father still pretends he has time to read at night, still works that job he hates because it pays. He’s noble like that.

Me, now, sees the picture. I’m still taking in the details, lips parted in a slow exhale, eyes cast skyward to the golden frame. But it’s there, I’ve noticed it, exited the chamber of maiden thought, entered upon the sublime. This is where it’s lonely and things feel so damn hard, but this is also where I begin to learn that the hard is the good, and that the long and twisting road is the path forward. Love is love and they are them, and I am at once a part of it and utterly alone. They are in love because they’ve lived and they are living and they choose to be together and alive. I am in love because I have not lived and I am living and I belong to them and to me. There will be years, yet, or there won’t be, and either way, it will be good. This sick sensation is IT, THE IT, the ONLY thing there is and ever will be. Tonight, my parents are in love. Tonight, I am in love, too.