jmurletti
This Saturday would have been my sister Lindsay’s 27th birthday. May 22nd, when spring—my sister’s season—is just about to turn into summer. I used to love this time of year, but ever since her death in May 2003 it’s been bittersweet at best. Summer has always been my favorite season, but to get there, I have to live through spring and the seasonal grief these months present.
Lindsay was born in the spring time, on the cusp of summer. Most of my memories of our childhood take place during this time of the year, when school was just about to let out and summer sports were just starting up. When we were little, we were pool rats by day and softball queens by night. We’d spend hours perfecting our underwater balance beam routines in the Olympic-sized pool at the park, and after we’d get home in the afternoon and trash the kitchen making pitchers of Orange Julius, we would go back outside riding bikes until dark. We would do all we could to avoid showers and bed time in those days, throwing on our dad’s old t-shirts as nightgowns and creeping out of bed after our parents went to sleep to play gin rummy.
Our teen years brought the usual distance that many siblings experience. Busy school, work and social calendars—and our general disdain for one another—meant we spent very little time together. But every now and then we’d get off the phone/recover from our cancelled dates with friends/swallow our egos and find each other again. In the spring I’d show up to watch her softball games and she’d let me crawl into her bed at night to watch movies. We’d get in the car on weekends and blow out our beloved Super Girl’s speakers as we ran errands around town together. Each of us abhorred much of the other’s favorite music, but we did share a love for the female rockers—Bikini Kill, Liz Phair, Team Dresch, Sleater-Kinney, The Sundays. It was not surprising to find a few of my favorite cds when I cleaned out her bedroom the summer after she died.
Speaking of music, I still have a hard time listening to the stuff we both loved and have this weird habit of hearing sad love songs and thinking about her. Asking myself why do good things never want to stay when I hear old Sleater-Kinney; making the girl in Bikini Kill’s Rebel Girl not the gutsy dyke in the neighborhood that everyone is secretly envious of, but my tough little sister. But that’s what siblings are, right? Our first peer loves—the ones we first try to emulate and impress; the ones with whom we share secrets and laugh at inside jokes; the ones that give us our first experience of unrequited love when they intentionally or inadvertently put down something we like or choose another playmate over us. The ones we deliberately hurt to protect ourselves. And the ones we friend-check five minutes later so that we can hurry up and forgive and forget and go out and play already.
After seven years without Lindsay, I’m starting to appreciate all that springtime is for me now. As I watch everything else come back to life I’m starting to actually value the growth I see in myself every spring. The parts that survived the winter and are coming back fuller this year. When I was in elementary school, I would sit Lindsay down in our play room and teach her all that I’d learned in school that day. She’d listen intently, ask questions, and take notes while I talked and talked and talked. This summer, as I prepare to teach a few courses at a local university, I know I have her to thank for serving as my first student. But I also have her to thank for all she’s taught me in her absence. Like how to listen and empathize. How to feel all the bad emotions I’d like to pretend I’m stronger than or above feeling. How to choose to feel better. How to cry when I get hurt, say something when I am wronged, burn some calories and sweat it all out, and treat myself unapologetically to a burger and fries and some retail therapy if that’s what the day calls for. How to savor spring and summer in the moment, remember those of the past, and feel okay about the sisterly love I apply to every sappy romantic love song I hear.
All this week—in honor of my sister’s birthday—I’ve been pulling up old cds from the 90s on my ipod and blasting out the speakers in my car (pretending it’s the red Ford Escort Super Girl) as I think about, long for, laugh at, and sing loudly to my my Rebel Girl, my Julie of the Wolves, my Good Thing. My Summertime.
