And it's ringing in my ears.

My sister went off to science camp yesterday. While when she got to the camp, there was no incident, the night before she suddenly started crying. She had been extremely excited for the past few weeks to go to science camp but I guess it just occurred to her all of a sudden that that meant that she would spend an entire five days without the family, by far the longest that she's ever done that. So she just broke and started crying. (I bet her hormones had a small part to play in that, too; it's nearly her time of the month.) She even googled "how not to cry at camp" that night. Hoo lordy, that was funny. In a pathetic sort of way.

Normally, I take my sister to school. This entails waking up at 6:00 am and leaving the house by 7:00 so we can beat the worst of the traffic. Every morning is loud--as soon as she's up, it's non-stop talking. Hell, I'd be worried if she weren't talking because she is after all a fifth grade girl; kinda goes with the territory. Sometimes she gets too loud and my mom censures her: "You cousin is still sleeping." Like that would stop her from making noise. (And like my cousin can't sleep through pretty much anything.)

I don't have class today until 10:00 so it was my intention to wake up a full hour or two later than usual. Heck, even two-and-a-half hours would have been fine. But out of habit I woke up at 6:00 am. It was dead quiet. I used the bathroom and went back to sleep.

When I woke up again at 7:00--just can't seem to get back into sleep mode--I noticed my parents were gone. I hadn't even heard them before they left. I normally would have heard them shuffling around--it's not like I was in a deep sleep or anything. For some reason they seemed to have escaped me.

It must be hard for them, having the little girl gone. Last night, my mom said that it's too quiet and boring without her. And I agreed. At night, she's always watching TV with me or we're always playing games together or whatever--provided we're both not busy--and I found myself at a loss for things to do. I fidgeted around with getting everything ready for class today, but that didn't take long enough. I fucked around on the shoutbox accusing people of giving me syphilis, but that was only mildly satisfying after so long. I read for a while, watched some TV, and went to sleep without much incident. Boooooring.

And my parents? I was just thinking about how incredibly difficult it will be for them to adjust to the empty nest once my sister leaves for college. It's a long way off, but consider this: my sister was born 12 years after I was. When I left home for college, they still had her to keep them company. That was probably one of the main reasons my mom had enough strength to let me go out on my own. But in eight years, will she have that strength? For the first time, she will be faced with the prospect of a completely empty house if she lets my sister go someplace non-local for college. Would she be able to do it?

In typical American culture, I guess this would be a foreign predicament--at least on this scale. Here, we're taught that at a certain age, you need to be forced out of the house and you need to be able to stand on your own two feet. We're enculturated to embrace those values; we undergo independence training: everything is a competition and you have to win and if you don't win then you're a failure. Well, that's part of me now, in some little way, and I wonder if I ever have kids (big fucking if) if that's the way it'll be. I hope not. But at the same time, I grew up in a household where family was of paramount importance, and where it isn't a shameful thing to be dependent on your family because they will be dependent on you. So in the case of my parents, they have done everything for the ideal of the family. They could have a larger house and fancier cars and nicer clothes and they could have taken more luxurious vacations and seen the world but because the family comes first, they opted instead to send us to private school--that's 9 years for K-8, 4 years for high school, and 4 years for college; you do the math.

So when my sister is on the cusp of leaving, will it be so easy? What's left for them if you take the family out of the equation? It's going to be the most difficult thing for them, I think, to let their baby girl go. So much harder than it was to let me go. It's going to slice them open and gut them, and as strong and as loving as my parents are, I don't think they can take that sort of damage. And who's being wronged here? Will it be my sister (assuming she wants to go away for college)? Or is it my parents?

Cross-generational and cross-cultural tensions will end up tearing a hole in all of our hearts.

Your sister is in fifth grade....? Wow... your parents really waited a long time to have another kid...
» randomjunk on 2007-01-09 04:38:21

The younger kid is always favored... I never understood that....
» randomjunk on 2007-01-09 05:00:12

I kinda feel that way... but it's more like the parents make all the mistakes with the first child so they're nice to the younger one to make up for it.
» randomjunk on 2007-01-09 05:06:16

woah, your sister has a time of the month and she's in 5th grade??

» Zanzibar on 2007-01-10 11:25:51

Yes.
And she will be taller than us both within a few years.
» ranor on 2007-01-11 12:03:25

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