Tag: loving

Laughing on an old brown leather couch.

From August 2014.

One of my dad’s favorite comedians has always been Robin Williams. For as long as I can remember – I have been obsessed with my dad’s laughter.

I think it soothes me. It lets me know that in that moment everything is good. We are all safe. Whenever I have the chance to snag my dad away so we can watch a comedy or a stand-up special – I do just that. When he laughs really hard he makes a lot of movements and eventually it just all becomes one big wheezy sound. Sometimes he laughs so hard that he cries. And we spend the next few days repeating our favorite lines to each other and laughing all over again.

That smile. That laugh. Two of my favorite images in my short lifetime.

Today, we watched a Robin Williams stand-up, followed by an interview. My mother and I on one couch, my dad on the other, and my younger brother passed out on their bed. I watched beyond the images moving on the screen. I looked for small remarks made by Robin, that today, mean a hell of a lot more than they did years ago. Words showing the darkness that lived within him as much as he worked at making others happy and full of laughter.

I realize that he has left us with all of these gems to assist in our laughter for years to come. He is still here. The man that he let us know. All of the different masks that we were privy to.

I also look to the man to my right, my father, and feel the warmth of comfort deep in my belly.

Things are okay.

They could be better.

They could be worse.

But we are here together. Alive. Breathing. Laughing. Smiling. Eating. Drinking.

I make a promise to myself today to pay more attention. To the underlying message in the words spoken by those I love the most in this bittersweet moment. I will not just listen, but hear. I will not just watch, but see. I will not just say, but do. I make a promise to look beyond what they think their eyes are telling them. To see the pain. The dark. The hurt.

I also know that it has never been more clear that when my mother and father no longer inhabit this earth physically with one another but with me – that their words, their laughter, their faces, and their movements will live in

my heart,

my soul,

my mind,

my bones,

my cells.

I will always remember all of the times we laughed so hard that we cried on the scratched up, with years, brown leather couches in the living room.

–S.

A Perfect Day – Eleven Years Ago.

I took my little brother out for hot dogs, ice cream, and some hardcore dance sessions during the car ride to retail therapy outlet mall.

Every time I think I know everything there is to know about that nine year-old boy, he surprises me.

He no longer eats his hot dogs plain. They are topped with ketchup and mayonnaise now.

His favorite song range from Lana Del Rey to Daft Punk (which he calls Drift Punk, and he tells me that EVEN our dad knows that’s their band name).

As I shift through the three radio stations I generally listen to, he directs me to stop at the ones that play the first song that catches his attention.

I lower the music to point out the airplane in the air, or the dog on the sidewalk with its owner, and he nods and smiles quickly, and turns the music back up.

He still misses our cats and dogs that have passed, and doesn’t quite understand where they go.

He closes his eyes and gets lost in the music.

He moves his head to the beats and pretends to know the lyrics as he lip sings.

Sometimes he actually knows the lyrics, and I look over in surprise, and he gets shy, lowers his eyelids, and stares away with a secret smile.

He gets the cone with vanilla ice cream, dipped in chocolate, with some crushed nuts.

He has an ice cream mustache the entire time, and while I am driving – I am frantically looking for something to wipe his mustache away. I forget in moments like this that he is nine. He can wipe his own mustache – if he really wants it gone. He is almost growing out of all these things.

He will eventually stop asking me to open his coke, or rip open the ketchup packet, or help him pass a level on a game. He will start doing these things independently.

Along with this – our dance sessions while riding in the car will become rarer.

It’ll start becoming embarrassing for him to do so and he will become old enough to stay home by himself and pick playing Halo 4 over going to Target.

I like to write about these emotions, these memories, because one day they will fade as well. I won’t remember them quite as vividly. I won’t remember that I was wearing my aqua button-up shirt with skulls and roses – that is way too big for me now because I’ve been losing weight. I won’t remember that E smelled like my dad’s aftershave because he says it holds for 72 hours. I won’t remember that we actually saw a woman who was crossing the street get hit by a car with our own eyes. I won’t remember that he didn’t get ice in his drink because he says his Dr. Pepper will start tasting like water. I won’t remember that he had a small red pimple on the front of his nose. I won’t remember that he wore his Champion sweatpants backwards for the second day in a row.

One day it won’t be hot dogs, ice cream, and dance. For E, it might be girlfriends, skateboards, and staying up late. For me, it’ll be a career, paying off student loans, and going to sleep early. I hope we always at least vaguely remember a time when life was simpler. Moments where we were infinite with David Guetta blasting in the backyard, ice cream mustaches, and soda highs.

–S.

23 didn’t know that 24 and 25 were going to rock her world.

The twenty-third year of my life was about swimming in an ocean of mistakes and coming back onto land to take chances. Both unfamiliar territories for me, for the record.

There is really something to be said about making mistakes that send you rolling into a gutter. You’re flat on your back. Everything hurts. Something might be broken. Your feet can’t carry you any longer. Some people in the gutter look up and see a pitch black sky. But if you look into the eyes of the others, you see what looks like a million shining white dots.

Stars.

And it’s in these eyes that warriors are born. I’d like to think that after everything that has happened up to this moment, that I’ve fought harder than ever to maintain my view of the stars. To still believe in the good. To not turn off their light. Even when the night almost consumed me. That I stripped away the layers of myself that died in the comfort zones I surrounded myself with and gave birth to a warrior.

A warrior ready to attack life because it’s going to attack right back. I’ve laid in quite a few gutters in the last year and I anticipate that I’ll lay in many more in the years to come. But the stars always light the way for me.

–S.

Mama.

I searched and searched and searched for a friendship that would top them all. Someone to love me through my shortcomings, cheer me on during my accomplishments, and make me face the growth that I so desperately tried to avoid.

You were always there.

To hear about a friendship that ended. Or the butterflies that came with the start of a new one.

You never faltered. Your presence always one of the greatest influences in any move I made in my life.

It took me a long time to realize that you are my greatest friend.

I am lucky, honored, and humbled to share this life with you.

I have found you in every life before this one, and I will find you in every life after this one.

–S.

You Saw Me, Anyway.

I disappear.

I disappeared.

I was disappearing.

And then he saw me.

In all of my flawed glory.

And I tried.

Tried, but was not successful in tearing my eyes away.

I fade.

I faded.

I was fading.

And our first kiss breathed life into my throat.

To my lungs.

To my stomach.

To my spine.

Ears.

Fingers.

Liver.

Toes.

Eyes.

Thighs.

Arms.

Hair.

And into my heart.

–S.

When my brother turned 9.

2013.

I think even when you turn 36, or 82, or 117, I would still call you baby.

You were born the day before I started eighth grade.

I was worried about which of my best-friends were going to what high school, my whole life ruined and in shambles. How was I ever going to pick where to go?

Mom already told me that she wouldn’t fill out the transfer papers. Do you think I could have forged them?

And then there was you. Little, but big at the same time.

With a head full of brown hair. You peed on the nurse. That’s when I knew you were going to be trouble. You were so…so baby. And I was scared to hold you. What if I hurt you? Or if I didn’t hold you correctly? Or you started crying?

In time, you became my little, but big at the same time best friend.

I think the most important thing that I have learned from your nine years on this earth is just to breath. Life isn’t about marking up a calendar to next year and back of things that need to be done. Life isn’t about constantly making lists. Life is just about living.

Sometimes you take fifteen minutes to say something that could have been said in one sentence, and you remind me of our mother.

Sometimes you get frustrated really easily and shut down, and you remind me of our father.

Sometimes you nod your head to a song you don’t know the lyrics to and you close your eyes, and you remind me of myself.

I know that there will be a day when mom and dad won’t be on earth with us and it’ll just be the two of us. Life won’t always be fort building, ramen making at midnight with melted slices of cheese, waking up to Nerf guns, cannon balls in the pool, ice cold cokes on a summer day, Halo 4 campaigns before going to sleep, Teen Titans at 3 am, or scavenging the refrigerator for two items that are possibly edible together.

People move away. They have their own families. They stop talking. They start again. They love. They get hurt. They love again. They never stop loving. These are also parts of living.

These are things we don’t write on our list or our five-year plan.

I remember when we had to put Whoopie to sleep, I think that was your first real loss.

You lost your best friend. The dog that you’d known since birth. You were eight. For a long time we were worried because you were really sad, and you stopped telling jokes and laughing as often as you used to. Your spirit wasn’t as bright as it had always been.

And then we brought Ringo home a couple months ago, and you didn’t want to tell mom and dad, but you whispered in my ear that it made you sad although you really liked Ringo – he just wasn’t Whoopie.

My heart broke baby.

I want you to know that if I could somehow ensure that a part of you stays innocent forever, I would. That a part of you still cries when Sarah McLaughlin comes on and they show the commercial with the animals. If I could somehow make sure that your heart is always big and always full of love and that you never get tarnished, I would do that for you. Even if it meant sacrificing any amount of happiness of my own. I want you to never be afraid to be yourself. Even if kids laugh. I want you to wear clothes that don’t match, if you want to. I want you to do the robot to a song that the robot ‘shouldn’t’ be done to. I want you to mouth lyrics you don’t even know. I want you to still hug mom and dad and tell them that they are your best friends. I want you to keep laughing. Keep dancing. Keep dreaming. Keep loving. Keep smiling. Keep hoping. Keep wishing. Keep being goofy. Keep telling stories. Keep telling corny jokes. Keep living. It has been an honor to help raise you, to love you, and to take care of you.

I hope you always remember a time when we laughed and played together, and the world seemed a little simpler.

–S.