January 7, 2010

Okay, so I have been having some internet issues (and some other issues as well, but that's whole other story...) so I have had to write my moments in my journal and will try to catch up with transcribing them from there to here over the next day or two. I apologize to my two "followers" (haha, thanks kids! You guys are the best!) that I did not really take internet issues and the stress of the semester end into consideration when I started this blog. I will post everyday... one day. (Though I really have been writing everyday!)

"Fatty, fatty, two-by-four,
Couldn't fit through the kitchen door."

I have no idea where my mom learned this, but I know that we learned it from her.

We were sharing a Klondike bar ("What would you do-oo-oo, for a Klondike bar?"), joking about Kayla's love for food, when she began to sing the catchy little chant we had picked up from my mom when we were kids. I chanted along with her and we reminded my annoyed mom that she was the one who had taught it to us; am not sure the transition took place, but we soon began asserting that she used to sing it to us. It was entirely untrue, and my mom immediately took to defending herself. Her words were pointless, as Key and I were already on a roll.

She was sitting in the living room at this point, and I was standing in the kitchen, leaning over the sink, not wanting to make a mess with my ice cream. I soon abandoned this idea, however, and laughing, claiming that I had to "eat the pain away," I shoved the remaining chocolate-covered bite into my mouth, making a point to have the melting vanilla ice cream dribble out the sides of my mouth and down my chin. Kayla, who still surprises me at times with her acute sense of humor, stood up and took a small bag of wrapped chocoloates into her hand. She leaned her head back, opened her mouth, and dumped the contents in- one or two of the foil-wrapped chocolates made it into her intended target, the rest spilled out over her cheeks and chin, bouncing on the hardwood floor.

It was too much. I could feel my face grow red, my body shaking, eyes welling with tears, gasping for breath in the wakes of my uncontrollable laughter. Kayla joined me in the kitchen and we laughed for minutes, making small comments that did nothing to help quell our irrepressible giggles. I hadn't laughed that hard in a long time, and without even thinking about it, this moment became one of the moments- the infinite ones.

Still dressed in my work clothes, my shoddy attempt to look professional, I was nothing beside my stunning, stylish sister. She's a little taller than me, skinny, chic, and looking very adult, especially next to my short, stockier self, complete with my crazy Helena Bonham-Carterish hair and a round baby face that often leads people to assume that I attend classes at my school, not teach them.

Our differences do not end at our physical appearances, but rather are equally present in our personalities and personal choices. She is only 15 months older than I am, beautiful and loving, married, owns a home, ready to start having children. I am a college graduate; focused on traveling, my teaching career, and my desire to keep others out of my life. We both admired each other for their choices, though we knew that were not choices we would have made for ourselves.

Worlds apart in our present and plans for the future, we stood in this moment, red-faced, clutching our sides, connected in life by a shared past and gene pool, and more specifically in this magnificent moment, by the flourescent lif kitchen, one silly, singular joke, and our similar laughs echoing both within and beyond us.

"Fatty, fatty, two-by-four,
Couldn't fit through the kitchen door."