Howdy, folks. The writing process is going more slowly than I had anticipated. I apologize. However, a wonderful piece of writing has been given to me, and with their permission, I share it with you now:
I trudge down the stairs in my Saturday morning best (though the day has long since progressed into Saturday afternoon), a baggy pair of faded green pajama bottoms and a worn t-shirt that has seen many better days. Even from the top of the steps I can hear little screams intertwining themselves with progressively more grown up voices; it must be playtime. My slipper-clad feet reach the tiled entryway and I turn toward the sounds.
Still rubbing the residue of a late Friday night party from my eyes, I turn another corner into the kitchen. I first discover that at least one of my four younger siblings successfully begged my stepdad to go out for donuts this morning, and I grab one from the now near-empty pink box on the stove. I lean on the counter to enjoy my treat and my tired face allows itself a smile as I face the adjacent family room.
My mom is lounging on the couch flipping channels on the TV, a magazine open on her lap, and as I respond groggily to her kind “good morning,” she settles on cartoons for the kids and turns back to her reading. Howie, my oldest brother, cranes around in his chair the instant he hears Spongebob’s laugh, and my mom playfully threatens to eat the last donut if he doesn’t finish his cereal soon. He grumbles and grudgingly turns back to his bowl of Cheerios. Adam, the youngest boy of the family, begins to beg my mom for another donut, and she chuckles as she cuts off his pleas, which is really her way of saying that she already regrets the piece she gave him earlier; after all, the high concentration of sugar has already caused the mischievous three year-old to forego his morning nap in favor of bouncing off the walls like an antigravity slinky. Adam soon forgets what he was doing and resumes his favorite activity, endlessly antagonizing Olive, who is texting her latest best friend about the woes of middle school drama. Her eyes stay glued to the phone until Adam begins driving one of his Hot Wheels cars over the bottom of her foot. She jerks away, shoots him a dirty “how dare you interrupt my infinitely important texted conversations about that cute guy in my English class” kind of look and kicks the car across the room, to which Adam responds by screaming indignantly and punching her leg with his miniscule fist before running to retrieve it. The family room carpet is littered with toys, including an overturned box of cars and trucks, several unrealistically colored dinosaurs, and scattered piles of crayons left over from someone’s most recent attempt to get Adam to settle down for more than ten consecutive seconds. Among these sits Lucy, the very youngest of us five children, oblivious to the familiar chaos as she stretches her tiny, chubby infant arms for a stuffed giraffe lying just out of her reach. It is my family chaos, though, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Did you see Brad on your way down?” my mom asks. I do not know my stepdad’s whereabouts, but just as I am about to answer no, he enters the room. He hugs me with a teasing “Good afternoon, lazy bones,” but I laugh and gratefully return the hug. His is a warm embrace; whenever I am wrapped in it I feel safe, and I am eternally glad that he crossed paths with my mom those few short years ago, bringing our family the hope and love we desperately needed after my mom’s ugly, drawn-out divorce from her first husband.
I lean back on the counter with my half-eaten donut, and my mom asks Brad if he would like to watch the kids while she goes grocery shopping today. He agrees, and falls comfortably onto the couch next to her, throwing his left arm across the back of the cushions and over her shoulders. I marvel at how happy and young my mom seems, compared to those days long past.
It is then that the weight falls on my shoulders along with the stark realization: This can’t be real. My heart starts to pound as it sinks from my chest to my stomach, where it begins to drown in the acid now pushing its way up into my throat. This is not real. The ugly days are not past at all. Olive, who rests her feet on the coffee table during her incessant texting, does not live here. She resides with our shared biological father, and I have neither seen nor spoken to her in nearly two years. What is going on here? Howie, here a strong, growing eleven year-old boy, was diagnosed with cancer on his second birthday and died a year and a half later, when I was only nine years old and in the fourth grade. This isn’t possible. I look at Brad, who smiles warmly back at me, and my head begins to throb painfully. Brad passed away unexpectedly one morning just over a year ago, only five short days after Lucy was born. To this day I do not know how or why, and I am too afraid of the answer to ask. A small, intruding voice in my head repeats my own thoughts me: The scene before you is impossible. It cannot happen. All that is left of your beloved family is a fragment of what it could have been. The words spread through my mind like poison, cold and unrelenting. They are the truth.
The family room, now a mocking fantasy, freezes in time, and my dream self, still leaning casually on the cold kitchen counter, allows itself the last twitch of a bitter and wistful smile before the scene dissolves. I am alone once more.
I awake in my bed, shaking uncontrollably under the covers. I force my eyes to stay shut and will my mind to retain those blissful, impossible images. I want nothing more than to fall back into unconsciousness, back into that unattainable world filled with hope and joy, but even as my body slowly gains energy, I know that I will not forget it easily. This dream is the most real, most
tangible, most maddeningly taunting trick my mind has ever played on me. All of my fantasies came true for those few moments, but it is a cement-cold, bone shattering, brick wall reality I inhabit now. There is no going back.
Eventually, my eyes open. It is Saturday morning. My bedroom is still, just as I left it the night before, waiting expectantly for signs of life. I sit up and push the sheets away with trembling hands, but cannot do more, and I do not even disturb the quiet as I fall back and begin to cry silently into my pillow. No matter how hard I try, I think, nothing will change. It can’t. There is nothing I can do. I am trapped.
I leave my room only once I gain sufficient strength to hide my tears. Nothing is resolved but the desire to keep my pain to myself. I trudge down the stairs. I did not go to a party last night, but spent Friday afternoon babysitting Adam and Lucy so that my mom could rest her injured back and knee. She gets so exhausted from caring for them on her own all week that I feel guilty going out with friends, or to band practice, or sometimes even to school, so I often decide to forget to wake her up if she naps in the afternoon. Friday afternoon turns into Friday evening with the kids, and with each similar night I become the second parent of the household. I reach the bottom of the stairs and shiver violently when my bare feet touch the frozen marble tile. There are no sounds issuing from around the corner. I turn into the kitchen. There is no pink donut box on the stove. The TV is turned off and the carpet is clear of toys. The couch looks cold and lonely. There is no family in our family room.
I sigh, but not because of my dream. I sigh for my reality. I sigh for what could have been, for what I’ve lost, and for the family I wish I had. I sigh, tired of asking “why me?” and resigned to life as I now know it.
Just then I hear voices. Gradually, a little laugh escalates into a scream, and a baby’s high-pitched squeal penetrates my moodiness from outside the kitchen window. Out of curiosity, I drag myself to the back door, slide it open, and find myself blinded by the glaring sunlight that fills our meager backyard. When I regain my senses I see that it is playtime. Adam flings dirt across the yard with a plastic yellow shovel as he attempts to carve out a hole under a bush, but he drops it to run and tackle my legs in greeting. Lucy squeals again when she sees me, but soon resumes gnawing on one corner of the blanket she’s sitting on, surrounded by her own pile of dirt, courtesy of Adam. My mom looks up from checking her email on her cell phone as I make my way across the soil-splattered yard. She is younger than she looks, and her careworn face shows the years of stress and countless trials in its creases. “Good morning,” she says, and she gives me a tired smile. Her hug is strong today, though, and I am glad that she feels well enough to have gotten up early with the kids this morning.
“How are you feeling?” I ask as I sit down on the patio chair next to hers, and she begins to scold me for letting her sleep all of yesterday afternoon, but she smiles as she does, and so I laugh, knowing that she is grateful. This is her way of saying thank you.
“I really appreciate it,” she says to me after a little while. “How you always pick up the slack for me when I’m not feeling well. I know it’s hard on you.” By reflex, I deny it, even though we both know it’s true. Things have been hard on all of us for as long as I can remember. Or what’s left of us, I think. Tears well up again, and I fight them like I always do when I’m around others. I do not have time, however, to linger on these thoughts because Adam begs me to come and play, and Lucy screams because she can’t reach her new favorite ball, having only recently learned to throw things. After rolling it gently back to her, I sit down in the dirt with Adam while my mom returns to her emails.
There really won’t be time to mope today, I realize. My mom starts to talk to me about groceries, but my thoughts are far away. I’m wasting what I have by dwelling on what I have lost. The intruding little voice from my dream that spoke of all those impossibilities falls silent now. Yes, I think. No matter how bruised or broken, this is my family now. Adam pours dirt on my lap, Lucy shrieks with laughter as she throws her ball again, and my mom just smiles. I smile too. My family, indeed.
