Good morning, good morning. Here I am again at my little desk, the one with the candles and the mug of (decaf) coffee doused with soymilk. the one with the quiet and the rush of traffic outside that can sound like the waves if I let my ears unfocus enough. The one that settles in around me, drapes itself around my shoulders, whispers, “quit stalling and write now, girl.”
Today is my sister’s birthday. I would like to tell you about birthdays of her past, from when we were little, but I can’t remember any of them. Is this an age thing or a trauma thing? At what point do you quit asking that question? I would like to be able to tell you, when my sister turned six, she had a big party with all of her friends from our school in the city, where we’d moved when I was still in kindergarten and she was only three. She wore a pink dress to the party and my mom made her a cake and all the kids played pin the tail on the donkey with a paper donkey that my mom made out of construction paper and pile cleaners for whiskers. But that’s not a true memory. I don’t know what happened for her sixth birthday, or her seventh, or her eighth. By her 8th we were living in Omaha, weren’t we? It’s not just big-sister narcissism — I can’t remember my own 6th or 7th or 8th birthdays, either. (Let this be a lesson to you, parents who are knocking yourselves out trying to one-up yourselves and every other parent in the neighborhood when it comes to your kids’ birthdays.)
I want to have those memories, though. I want to have a direct thread to the length of our togetherness. I want to remember more clearly how much we loved each other, and what we fought about, and when we disappointed each other and the secrets we kept for each other. I want there to have been good secrets between us. I know we had them. I just don’t remember.