I have been
a wee bit out of sorts for the past two months, and my writing has been
straight out of an acid washed, tape bound composition notebook circa 2004. I
had a deadline in my brain when I woke up this morning that by the time I go to
sleep, I will have produced something to post on the bloggity blog.
When I got
home, I was all rarin’ to go on some recent feminist issue: a silver tongued
soap box declaration of human rights. Rah rah rah. And, trust me. That will
come in time. But, in my Skype conversations with my sister, I realize that there are more important things than pushing my incredibly
biased agenda on you unsuspecting folks at home.
This past week, my sister, an elementary school music teacher (among a million other really awesome things), had a choir concert. As she was preparing for it, she told me about the theme and how excited she was to do “A Night at the Theatre.” All throughout high school, our house rang with show tunes and theatrical responses to paltry issues. I was eager to hear how the show went.
After a
short conversation (technology did that thing that it stopped working at the
exact moment you’d like it to work), she sent me an email with some videos of
her concert. She said, “Check out…video one for a little surprise.” Right
before “Somewhere Out There” from Fieval
Goes West, she made an announcement to the audience about how for siblings, she only
has me, her little sister, who currently lives in South Korea. And, we only can talk on
Skype, but sometimes we say, “I’m looking at the moon, Sister” because when we’re
both looking at the same moon, it seems like the distance isn’t so far.
And, that
right there is the point of this. Of all of this. Distance in time and space
when gauged by the moon seems so minuscule, so silly. The same moon was there before I was born. It’s there now.
It will continue after I depart this earth.
Under this
ubiquitous moon, my sister loved me before I was a feminist, before I was a
teacher, before I was strong. She loved me through my terrible twos, my
codependent eights, that awkward summer when I was 13 with braces, glasses, and
a broken arm. That awkward summer when I
was 22 with…ummm…that awkward summer when I was 22. And, sometime between
Backstreet Boys, pogs, and hair dye the bond changed from loving each other
because "Mom said" to loving each other because we chose it.
The same
moon that shown over us in our childhood, still peeks his head out now. He watches over
us as we continue to grow—a constant charge in our ever evolving lives. And, I’m
not sayin’ that because I live in the future I know all the things, I’m just
sayin’ that I know that the world doesn’t end today. The sun rises with her as the moon rises with me. Tonight, though, it’s just a sliver, a bow shooting
memories across the sky.
