So many things I could have done.
By Lila Dubois
In the seeping cool twilight of summer, I meet my sister for television.
I slump on the couch beside her, sister arm to sister arm, legs stretched heavy on the coffee table, fudgsicles in hand. I’ve brought my book and am half reading, half watching, until eventually the book has fallen and I’m glued to our nightly slough of reality reruns and cheap Netflix originals.
Rosey falls asleep quickly, her breath warm and regular, face flushed like a baby mid-nap. She works at a soccer camp, wrangling kids into shin guards, slathering them with sunscreen, and consoling sore losers. She ends her days tired but satisfied, and with a farmer’s tan of increasing severity. And in the maternal way of older sisters, I am glad now too to see her resting.
I remain awake, though. Laugh track washing over me like a chill, it is in these small, dark hours that I wish I’d done more with my day.
My friends from college are doing impressive things this summer. My roommate works at a bank in Brazil, wearing pencil skirts and pantsuits, calculating with a level of math I’ll probably never reach. Others are interning abroad, spending nights dressed in bright corals and reds with tight black eyeliner, real young adults who stay out dancing into the sticky warm of tropical dawns, waking the next morning to work on good, impressive things. They travel with NGOs, PA on film sets, watch births and plastic surgeries. They are learning and helping, moving toward the brilliant futures they’ve all worked for and deserve.
So in the solace of my nights, alone but for a sleeping sister and the television flash, I feel my inadequacy most acutely.
Mine has been a summer of nothing.
Beyond lying on the couch, Joni Mitchell in my headphones, writing stories here and there, and picking up a few shifts at the café where I’ve worked since high school, I feel no urge to do much other than read at the dog park, paralyzed in the whitewash afternoon blaze, like a camera pointed directly at the sun and utterly overwhelmed in its yellow oblivion. Sometimes I sit at the kitchen counter picking at odds and ends of vegetables my mom cuts for dinner. I often pick people up from the airport, a job reserved for those who are largely unemployed, and have listened to “Cactus Tree” upwards of 50 times in a week. I tutor here and there for a few bucks but can’t seem to produce anything worthwhile with my own name on it.
I rot all day and can’t sleep at night; it’s all left me rather sick of myself. Frustrated by my lack of motivation, a racing mind and inability to sleep. By the sameness of my high school job, by the technicolor visions my friends have for their futures, claiming admiration when, if I’m honest, what I really feel is envy.
I often visit my grandma. I eat through the ice cream freezer burn, listening vaguely to her repeat stories and answering questions I’d answered moments before. I pick up the Snapple bottles she leaves half-finished around the house, and I walk the dog. Sometimes I take a bath in her sublime porcelain basin of a bathtub, simmering until soft and tender in my uselessness, and afterwards come downstairs to eat more ice cream and watch 60 Minutes or Dateline at max volume for a couple hours until my grandma falls asleep.
I write letters to friends on Hello Kitty stationery instead of just picking up the phone. I play Cranberries songs in the passenger seat while my sister drives us to a boba shop or El Pollo Loco after work.
At home, I lay on the lawn, tanning and Joni-Mitchell-ing out of my head all considerations of what I will do with my life, how I might quiet my mind enough to sleep, where I will someday purchase that prodigal pantsuit. It’s me, “Coyote,” and a high UV index against the world.
I am overfed by my mother who feels I don’t eat enough at school. I pick my grandma up from her hair appointments, a cut and color each month to keep the blonde looking fresh. I’ve also, for whatever reason, gotten into watercolors. I paint abstract shapes I defend as recognizable people and things and give them out to family and friends. At the ripe age of 21, it is both an honor and complete embarrassment that my mother has taped these up at her desk.
I’ve started running again, too. I go before my shifts, if I have shifts, when the sun hasn’t yet breached the ozone in any truly obscene way and my dog and I are the only ones out. He is old and I am slow so we’re a perfect match. Afterwards, I take a cold shower and leave my hair wet to drip down the length of my back the rest of the morning. It feels wonderful.
I realize my sister is up when a fudgsicle hits me across the cheek. She returns to my side, the warm rushing back to the arm she’d left bare. I can’t help but think how good it is to have a sister, to never have to ask for another fudgsicle. I tune back into the Khloes and Kylies, the divine simplicity of the screen, the sugary chocolate melt, and my kind, sunburnt sister who knows me so well.
I pull out my phone. I want to quickly write down the specifics of the moment, so as not to forget them the next time I am lost in my yellow oblivion.
So I’m writing down Kardashian and Rosey, the glorious coolness of summer nights and fudgsicles, and suddenly, I am overwhelmed. Because none of it was nothing. All of it, actually, has been a lot.
It’s all swirling before me now. My summer. The small things suddenly adding up to something bigger. The filaments of sun on the lawn and stop lights on the way to the airport. The glow of the TV and the singing steam of the espresso machine against my face. I’d even gone to see my grandpa in Colorado. My whole family had been there and we’d played cards (only those games made up of all luck and no skill, the exciting ones) and my other grandma made iced tea. Safe behind the porch screen, we’d eaten tomatoes from the garden and watched afternoon storms growl and grimace across the plains.
Back home, I’d gotten coffee for people, I’d edited high schoolers’ summer school essays, I’d eaten lunch with coworkers who made beautiful music and jewelry after hours. I’d taken hikes with my dogs through hills of tall, dead grass, shimmering in the stark light of morning. I’d eaten beans and corn with my mom and listened to my grandma. I’d watched from behind a pint of ice cream as she lost her memories and her mind, but none of her hair.
How could all of this be nothing?
I would return to school with little to show for my résumé, but maybe mine has not been a summer of nothing. Mine has been one of frozen treats, Joni, mastering iced lattes and trying to remember orders without writing them down (I never do). It’s been one of sweating alone in the dog park, of giggling with coworkers, sisters, and grandmas who still bleach their hair. Of a mother with no shortage of opinions, Brazil nuts (“for the selenium”), or pride in her daughters. Of wonderful, mediocre watercolors and wonderful, slow runs. Of nights spent with a sleepy sister, a surrogate for what I cannot yet do myself.
On this alone—a sister who knows me, who brings me fudgsicles and sleeps enough for us both—I could have considered myself lucky. On this alone, I could consider my summer warm and rich and good. Coupled with a nap on a dog park bench, a few well-made cappuccinos, and maybe even a dinner date with my grandma, it is more than enough.
I finish my fudgsicle and rest my head on my sister, smiling slightly. I can tell she is too. She asks if I want another, but I say no. I am full.
Lila Dubois is a College senior.
