Glum Kitchen Thoughts of the Other-Blooded Sister

As I scowled upon the awful disaster that was my kitchen, I finally came back to reality. My mind had been drifting elsewhere in the last hours that I was lying still upon the couch, seemingly calm in figure, but my imagination running wildly in a thousand different places at the time, jumping around from thought to thought like lemurs from tree to tree.

The kitchen was a glum reminder of what my life was, and, even more devastatingly so, what it was clearly not turning into.

Green dishes glared at me, cross that I had allowed the red and clumpy sauce from yesterday’s dinner to dry upon them, a couple even with some stray spaghetti strands stuck to the surface. Gross. Clear plastic cups frowned with brown droplets of this morning’s coca-cola becoming sticky on the inside. Silverware, coffee cups, spatulas and pans formed a pyramid-like booby trap within the nearly invisible sink.

I let out a rude sigh and irascibly wondered how only two people could accumulate so many dishes, and in such a short amount of time. It was but yesterday that Paul had loaded and ran the dishwasher, clearing the sink and the area surrounding it of all the greasy plates and pans that had piled up in the kitchen from the night previous.

The nasty messes didn’t really bother me when Paul was gentlemanly enough to take care of it, which was often. But tonight he was working and I was not. I had done no hard labor, in fact, I had done quite the opposite. Paul had gone to work at 3:00 today, and it was already past twilight. What had I done all day? What had I thought of? I couldn’t let him come home to all this...

On top of the kitchen, the bedroom was a terrible disaster, what with dirty clothes scattered across the floor, wires and chargers spread about, water cups that collected on my side of the bed over the last few days, and little papers dispersed in all corners of the room, junk mail, I imagine. The living room wasn’t all so horrendous. A few cups and a book sat unattractively on the coffee table and Simba had chewed a hole in his stuffed frog and spit out the cotton guts all over the carpet. But otherwise, I would just need to adjust the couch pillows and throw the shoes in the closet, and then it would be comfortably presentable. The biggest demon was finding the motivation to clean those dishes!

When I did, it wasn’t as miserable as I had anticipated, which was good, but a little disappointing as I realized I didn’t really have to dread and procrastinate all those hours. As I washed, squeezing suds from the damp sponge in one hand and holding each dish upright with the other, I became hypnotized again in my own thought.

My mind is rather good at time travel. Sometimes, when it should be focusing on driving, it jumps back into yesterday. It crawls up to the door of my parent’s house and slithers inside. It finds a comfortable spot in the family room and props it’s legs up on the arm of the my mother’s grey chair, lighting a cigarette. And then it watches the fight that she and I had yesterday. It watches us yell at each other and tries to jump in front of me warning me not to say that.

And sometimes, when I should be focusing on paying the water bill, my mind teleports into the future! It jumps into the year 2014. It sees me sitting on the same couch, but in a different house, trying to pay a bill via the internet. It sees my two-year-old bothering me while I try to find some peace, and watches me wishing I had something more to show for all of my hard work, or at least for all of my hard dreaming.

But right then, while I was cleaning those nasty, saucy, coke-sticky dishes, my mind jumped back to this morning and watched the conversation I had with Angelina. Sweet, erratic, sister and best friend, Angelina. Our relationship had been somewhat strained since I got back, which was painfully dissimilar to what either of us were used to in each other's presence.

We had sat alone in my parent’s house for several hours, talking, finally back in rapport. And as the water was running over my hands and I scrubbed clumps of tomatoes off of the plastic green plates, I couldn’t get my mind off of one topic in particular that we had discussed that morning about the future.

I had told Angelina that despite what I had previously thought, I felt like she would be the first of the family to have children, even though I was the oldest. To my unforeseen surprise, she agreed, and further proceeded to tell me her life plan.

Yes. There I was, 19 years old, and in life limbo. Graduated and standing still, holding a diploma in one hand and lease in the other, while my 15 year old sister babbled endlessly about the road she was on, unable to see a stop sign for hundreds and hundreds miles.

In harmless jealousy, I listened to her map out the next 5 years to me in simple but erudite detail.

1. Finish high school.


2. Apply to and attend 2-4 years of junior college, as a technicality.


3. Get married to long-time boyfriend, AJ.


4. Have children. And then..


5. She won’t work. She will stay home with her kids. She won’t…work.


6. That’s it.

That’s it. That’s really all she wants to do. She barely wants to go to college. She doesn’t want to learn how to do anything or have a profession. She doesn't have to write letters to the school or apply for financial aid. She doesn’t have to pick a major. She doesn’t want to get a job.

She wants to be a mom. She only wants to be a mom. She doesn’t want to travel anywhere, she doesn’t want to see any place else, she doesn’t want to move anywhere. She just wants to get married and be a mom.

I felt a slight twinge of pain somewhere in my heart at the thought of a life like that, and then fanatical confusion as to how anyone could be okay with that. Could want that. The confusion became even more radical as I thought that a person of those desires could have the same DNA as me, the same blood rolling inside their veins. The same blood that I had. The same burning, ravenous, wanderlusting, angry-with-unfulfilled-desires-shade-of-red-colored blood ablaze inside the veins, like mine. It couldn't be the same.

I couldn't, still can't, decide which of us is dangerously juvenile. Am I so naive and immature to want to travel to different places and complete my studies in other countries, regardless of the cost, the time away from home, the language barrier, or the danger? Am I ridiculous that the only thing I want in life is to see the world? That I have no set-in-stone technical fool-proof plan? Am I losing it?

 Or is she so childish to want to hardly continue her education and to never work?! To only want to raise children and never do anything else! To not indulge in life, the Earth and the people living on it. To not want to see what they see. Just be home. -Enter twinge of pain-

Who here is completely off their rocker?

I very quietly envied  my sister’s gratification with having such a simple life. To be satisfied with the easiest things to come upon, it would be such a relief. But I didn’t have such a luxury. There I sat, cursed with an insatiable desire to see and do it all! Thirsting and aching to learn everything there is to know and see everything there is to see, on top of the fear of becoming a mother and wife far too late in life.

And all the while nodding and smiling, assuring everyone else: “Don’t worry. I got it all figured out.”