Love, Jimmie

Have you guys ever used a tongue scraper?  I read about them once in a Marian Keyes novel and also heard the term “fresh as a daisy” thrown around as an after effect from using one, so I got me one and put it to use a few times a week.  I guess it works but it’s not something I go around asking. “Hey,” hack directly into someone’s face, “do you notice that my breath smells like daisies?”  Talk about instant social ostracism, no matter how daisy fresh I am.

Anyway, yesterday I put it to use but apparently a little too enthusiastically because I gagged myself. It took an inordinately long time to recover from that.  I had to lie down.  Everything revolted for a long number of minutes and when I felt I could stand, I commenced to drying my hair and mentally disposed of any breakfast I had planned on eating.  I might be permanently off of trying to achieve that level of oral hygiene anymore.

That story really has nothing to do with anything but I felt I should share it.

I talk a lot about Martie here but I do have another sister, Squirt, who I talk about less. She’s just as great but she often lives far away and quite honestly, she is a terrible communicator.  She is significantly younger than me, so much so that if I were to date one of her friends I’d feel like a ridiculous wrinkled up old hag with a young whippersnapper type sugar baby.  If I shared funny stories about her I’d mostly be making them up because I don’t get to experience them for myself very often.  She’s a cute little thing, though.  Here, look.

One super cute story – when she was tiny, big enough to have hair and eat adult food but young enough to speak in her toddler language still, she asked for chips. Ruffles, specifically, and I’m only telling you this so you can recreate the picture in your head.

“Uh-ona jap, plz,” she said.

Fortunately, Martie and I spoke Squirt toddler and understood that “uh-ona jap, plz” meant “I want a chip, please.” Also fortunately, Squirt was amenable to repeating this over and over at our request while we flailed about on the sofa wheezing with mirth at the cuteness of it.

Anyway. After a time, we gave Squirt the bag of Ruffles which she protectively placed between her legs and against her body, effectively hiding herself behind the bag.  All we could see were two tiny toddler feet on either side of the bag, one blonde pigtail sprouting from both the right and left of the Ruffles, and a tiny hand reaching ever so often into the bag to pluck a single chip for her consumption.  We’d hear the crunch, watch the hand, and flail around wheezing until our stomachs hurt. Unfortunately for Squirt, we still have the same reaction when we tell the story now, which is often.  Poor kid. I don’t think she will ever be allowed to grow up as far as Martie and I are concerned.

I say that, but it isn’t true. See, Squirt just left two weeks ago for a stint in the Peace Corps. She’s in Paraguay for 27 months and it is unlikely that she will come back to the States during those months.  Martie and I were super excited for her until it came time for her to go.  Suddenly, she was leaving.  It was real and she was going and to say that we were distraught is putting it far too lightly.  We had taken her shopping for things she would need.  We asked a million questions about what she’d be doing.  We spent more quality time with her than we’d done in a while but two days before she got on that plane, we had a comeapart.  I say comeapart but what I really mean is comeaparts.  Ssss.  More than one.

Our small younger sister is in another country with people she only met at the staging session. We saw the group picture of the pile of Peace Corps, Paraguay, but we don’t know those people. We don’t know her host family.  We cannot visit for three months which feels like an eternity even though we might only see each other once a year sometimes and had no plans to go Paraguay in those three months anyway.

On the Tuesday before the Thursday that Squirt left, my boss came to my desk to give me good news. She said, “I have good news,” and when she delivered it, I burst into tears, much to the surprise of both of us.  She paused for a moment and said, “You heard the part where I said good news, right?”  I did that a lot that week.  I especially did that when Squirt sent a text from the plane in New York, right before they took off for Asuncion.  I called Martie and sobbed; then when I stopped Martie started.  Why? Why do we feel this way?  Squirt has been taking good care of herself for years now. She’s an adult.  She is more than capable. She loves meeting new people and moving to new places and most importantly she loves to give back. She always has.  Why is this different?  I have to stop asking these questions because I’m crying a little now and I have to drive soon.

I suppose I wrote the oral hygiene story because it’s a silly moment in my life, one that I would have shared with Squirt during one of our many beach visits. We would sip on champagne, because why not, and tell stupid stories and laugh. Sometimes cry.  But we connected. And if she comes here to read my life, she’ll see it and know what it would feel like if I were telling her this perched on my beach towel with a cocktail in hand while I cooked myself into bacon in the hot sun.  This is our connection.  I hope we don’t lose it.  We aren’t going to lose it.

Love you, Squirt. Always.