Rush of my Heart

My mom and I went to a sandwich shop a while back, and got our usual. She had her veggie, I had my turkey, and we split a drink – with two straws.

I went to take a drink out of the shorter straw, and she stopped me with an offhanded, “Oh, I gave you the tall straw today.”

I froze.

We’ve been sharing drinks for over 20 years. I…have always…had… the short straw. I don’t know why, that’s just the way it’s always been.
I stared at her suspiciously, searching her face for a secret motive. Waiting for her to explain herself, or say, “just kidding. I wouldn’t mess with tradition.”

But she didn’t. Her enormous hazel eyes were looking behind my seat across from her, at the two women speaking at the counter, the wall decor, the sign on the wall — who knows what. The point was, she wasn’t looking at me. I kept the diet soda in my hand, not moving. Her eyes absently moved to a place above my left shoulder.

“Why would you do that?” I asked, my voice coming out louder than I’d expected.

Her eyes snapped back to my face, genuine confusion reflected there.
“Do what?” she asked. Her train of thought had moved so far past the station where I was stuck, she couldn’t even remember where she’d left me.

“Why would you give me the tall straw?”

“No reason.”

And there I had it. No reason. No reason to do something outrageous, like flip our unspoken straw practices.

Sometimes, some people just get the urge to shake it up. To get out of a rut of their own making.
Sometimes it’s spontaneous.
But sometimes, sometimes change is planned to the very last detail.

I watched a piece of my heart drive away the other night in a white car against a black sky, and all I could think about was that stupid straw. Did I tell him he could switch things up on me? Did I say I was ok being the tall straw from now on? I shifted my sore feet, and heard the crunch of freshly thrown birdseed beneath my ridiculous heels.
I experienced a moment of pure, childish, selfishness.

I’d been left back at the station.
Forgotten in butterfly land.
A sidekick with no leading man.

I felt my face contort in a warning of the kind of tears that massacre composure, as the first heave of my chest gave way in a quick hiccup breath. I became afraid. I couldn’t cry now. Not in front of all these people. Not here.

I looked around for a distraction, anything that could keep me from losing it. My gaze rested on those same enormous hazel eyes, looking back at me through the cheering crowd in a glassy glance of total understanding.

Suddenly, my cheek was wet. The wind blew, a whisper of New Year’s snow on the air as it coyly refused to fall.

I began to think.
It is possible to lose something and gain it in the same second. Take that stupid straw. I lost that security of definite knowing that I would have, forever, unquestionably, the short straw. But I gained the advantage of not having to lean down quite as far to quench my thirst that day.

Though I know I’m not incapable of it, I have a hard time with change. That is, I dislike changes that I don’t orchestrate. Does that make me a control freak? I prefer to think of it as, “one who appreciates preparation.”
Interpretation: don’t switch things up on me. Especially when it involves my family, the ones I am freakishly close to.

I wiped my eyes, checked my mascara, and talked to the smiling guests in the doorway, shivering in my blue dress. A quiet voice caused me to look over into the next room, and I saw my dad beginning to pick up the wreckage. His eyes were grey rather than their usual bright blue, but still, he smiled at me. I wanted to hug him. My delicate hold on my emotions would never allow a hold on him, so I turned and complimented a dress instead. But even as I spoke in the present of color schemes and hem lines, I couldn’t keep my mind from wandering back over the years to so many different things involving the one who’d just driven off into a new life in a soap washed car.

Suddenly, I was seeing the Dorothy we’d built in our backyard out of a plastic trashcan to catch tornadoes.
The giant peace sign we’d painted on our mini trampoline as the centerpiece of our club house.
I could hear people asking if we were twins.
The alibis we’d beautifully spun to our neighbors when they came too close to catching us in their garages, backyards, and houses as we secretly investigated them for foul play.
We were digging in a sandbox to find a buried treasure.
I could hear the sound of our pogo stick breaking through our skateboard ramp in a moment of his bad judgment.
The annoying beeps of our battling Digimon.
I could see him sitting cross legged and skin kneed next to me on the playground as I cried in the Red Zone when I was mortified by my public punishment at school.
I could hear the sound of the loud speaker calling both of us to the principal’s office at once, and feeling glad I wasn’t alone.
I could see the dances we made up to Ace of Base songs with the neighbor kids.
Hear the song he wrote for me when I got sick.
The hours we’d spent making movies that were only funny to us.
I was banging on Tupperware while he plucked at a guitar and we wrote our first song together in his tiny bedroom.
The sound of him sticking up for me, always, in situations when no one else would.
And I could picture the face I’d pull whenever someone referred to me merely as his “little sister” – though secretly, it was a title I couldn’t be happier to bear.

I continued thinking as the crowd wound down, and the overhead lights came on. I roamed from table to table blowing out candles and folding empty metal chairs alongside the last stragglers of the night. This change hadn’t been of my orchestration, but his. His. Considering who he is to me, isn’t that kind of the same thing? I lost that classic sense of normality that I’d once cherished. But I’d gained something too. Sonic always had Tails. Then one day, they got Knuckles too. Ash had Misty. Then a few gyms down the road, they picked up Brock. And yes. I am nerdy enough to have just typed those sentences as a grown woman. I blame him.

I drove up the dark, winding mountain road later that night, a Dean Martin song softly filling the spaces between two bodies. A warm hand took mine, replacing the need for words.

The status quo will change. The norm won’t stay the norm forever. Mental adjustments will eventually have to be made.
Unfortunately, my brain has gotten so lazy and fat that it balks at the idea of movement. But it is within my power to exercise the crap out of it.

So yes. One day, my mother changed up our straw practices. And you know what? I survived. And I like to think I’m better for it. Because it’s not really about who draws the short straw. It’s about looking within to see if the cup you’re drinking out of is really half empty or half full.