to my sister and brother

inspired by this post from kim.

When I was little, my mom put a bulletin board up next to our toilet in the bathroom. You know, kind of like the restroom stalls in bars where they put ads up. Its reading material. Stuff people put there because they know you have to sit there. digress...

So there's this bulletin board. And my mom posts poems about embracing life and being a safe driver and wisdom from the dalai lama- and more than anything else - loving your siblings. Because there were...ahem, times...that my siblings and I may have appeared not to get along. One article that I will never forget (and yet am about to completely butcher) was something along the lines of...

Someday your photos will fade. Your toys will be gone. Your home will be different.
Someday your parents will be gone. The friends you played with and girlfriends/boyfriends you had - will all be gone. Your siblings may be all you have of your past.

No one else will remember the games you played. The secret forts. The roadtrips. The make-believe stories. No one else will remember your favorite toys or the songs you used to sing. No one will remember the family pets or the games you played.

Which is why you have to love them and treat them nicely, because someday they will hold your past and be your connection to every memory of your childhood.

Again, totally butchered. And for all I know my mom totally made that up as a sentimental way to make me not want to scream at my sister for stealing my clothes the second I left that bathroom. Which I probably did anyway.

---

So...

To my brother and sister,
You remember the playroom in the basement with the smell of the woodshop.
You remember the backseat of the brown station wagon.
You remember the laundry shoot in the corner that was good for dropping things down (which for the record c-you totally ate some varnish when mom was staining that thing and she called poison control and later denied the whole thing ever happened because she didn't want me to say things like 'he probably did that because he literally ate paint chips as a kid'. but it happened.)
You remember feeding Mikey with a spoon.
You remember Miss Piggy's reaction when the refrigerator opened.
You remember the smell of EPIC.
You remember the lake who's sand was always black about an inch under the surface. we maybe shouldn't have played in that.
You remember russian olive trees.
You remember the words to 'just me and my dad'.
You remember big bird hanging out the window.
You remember the day we moved to a new planet. It was hot.
You remember the rat language.
You remember the day you totalled my Taurus. and then totalled your Taurus. and then the day I totalled my Taurus. They had a point with those safety ratings.
You remember Flash. And Donald Duck. And built this city.
You remember other days too. Days that make me cry when I try to type about them.

You will remember that sometimes I am not good at telling you things.
But better at posting them for anyone in the world to read.