SPEAK
In spite of the age difference,the bond between me and my little sister is timeless
I said goodbye to my little sister, Kitty, on a hot mid-August afternoon. We'd all driven up to college together — Mom, Dad, Kitty and me. The car ride was sad and quiet. Kitty was seven years old and had cried when I told her I was moving away. I wished I could bring her. Maybe she could live with me and my three roommates in the scholarship hall, I thought.
The day Kitty was born was the longest, boringest day of my life. There was no school, so I spent the day at my aunt and uncle's house while my parents were at the hospital. My aunt tried to keep me entertained by dealing out game after game of "War" in front of the TV. "Do you ever watch soap operas?" "No," I said. We watched one after another, and the clock moved like it was underwater.
Early that evening, my dad called and my aunt took me to the hospital. I was 11 and in fifth grade
hospital. I was 11 and in fifth grade — an only child. My family had recently bought a 1987 Chrysler New Yorker and a piano, sold our house and my dad's motorcycle and moved from Farmington, N.M., to Overland Park and family. Before we moved, our shaggy old sheep dog, Henry, my lifelong companion, had grown so sick that all he could do was lie in the
same place in our back yard with flies buzzing all over him. The vet was no place for this dog to die, so my dad took him to the desert and shot him.
And now I was riding to the hospital, a boy with no dog, few friends, parents bugging him to
take piano lessons,
glad to get away
from Days of Our
Lives and anxious
about meeting his
little sister.
When I got there my mom was sitting on a bed and my dad was holding my sister in the corner of the room. "Do you want to hold her?" he asked. He put her
Seven years later, in the summer after my senior year of high school, we lived in the same
My dad and I drove home that night and my mom and Kitty stayed at the hospital. It snowed a little on the way home and I looked out the window. Suddenly, the new school and the piano and the dead dog and the new house and everything else fell away. I was too old to be ambivalent about my new sister. I knew a line had been drawn down the middle of my childhood; pre-Kitty and post-Kitty.
by Frank Tankard
about halfway into my arms, but that was enough for me. I didn't want to drop her, so I stood back and just looked. She was little and crying and had red skin and a little head full of dark hair. A nurse said she looked like a peanut.
house, with a 1994 Oldsmobile Cutlass instead of the New Yorker and a two-year-old maltese dog named Molly. I had taken piano lessons for a few years and now it was Kitty's turn.
She had long curly brown hair and some missing, teeth. She
went to Catholic school and my dad coached her soccer team.She was smart and liked drawing and writing. She liked staying up late and sleeping in and the first thing she said every school day was "I hate this day."She was funny. In the winter she loved sledding and never complained
One day that summer we were squabbling about something and I told her, "Well, in a month I'll be moving out and you won't have to worry about me anymore." She stopped talking and her eyes welled up. I realized then that, though she knew I was
about being cold In the summer she loved swimming and never complained about being hot.
In high school, I was busy with school and friends and track, and I wasn't home a lot, but we always got along well. I would tickle her and throw her around on the couch and take her with me on errands and we would play Rock Paper Scissors — the kind where you lick your finger and slap the loser on the arm. We had inside jokes that no one else thought were funny.
going to college, she hadn't fully understood what that meant. The rest of the summer she was nice to me and a little sad and I could tell she didn't want me to leave.
PHOTOS COURTESY OF FRANK TANKARD
Move-in day came unceremoniously in August. Everything was bustling at Battenfield Scholarship Hall with talk of carpet and trips to Target, and I met my roommates and the guys across the hall. I kept looking out of the corner of my eye at the little girl standing quietly next to her mom. We walked back to the car and I shook my dad's hand and hugged my mom. Kitty stood quietly, not crying but with teary eyes. I picked her up, hugged her and set her down. Then I went back inside to all these new people and college.
These days my parents live in the same house and drive a 1998 Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight (I drive the 1994 Cullas!) Kitty is
in fifth grade, the same grade I was in when she was born, and she is done taking piano lessons. Her hair isn't as curly as it used to be and she likes animals. Since I started college she's had three chickens, two rabbits, a hamster, a fish, a cat, two mice and the dog, Molly, of course.
She has my cell number memorized. I have her picture in my wallet and on my desk in my apartment. When I come home I still tickle her and we still have jokes. She and my mom are in the process of boxing up all of my things at home and she is going to move into my room, which is about two inches bigger than hers. I'll be graduating in May and I won't be moving back home. But that's OK, Kitty and I know that no matter where we are in our lives, we have a connection that is timeless.
01.25.2007 JAYPLAY < 15