By: Clare
I never write blog posts. I have sworn off blog posts for the rest of my life. And yet here I am, writing this, and there you are, reading this, and somewhere 3 sisters of mine are sitting behind a screen grinning gleefully because I promised “By: Clare” would never appear on the sweetridgesisters page again. But Kate was right, she has inspired me to do many things, including write a blog post, You got the oldest’s view, now you can have mine, which is valued at a higher price than Donald Trump.
All my life I’ve undergone The Interview. Meaning, I meet a person. Person learns I am the youngest child. Wait, I am the youngest of how many? Eyebrows shoot up. Eyes scrunch together. Then I hear The Question: “Sooo, do you like being the youngest?” My answer is always, “Well, there are pros and cons.” Then I give a soft chuckle and sprint walk away in the politest way possible.
It’s true, there are many, many pros and cons. But by far the biggest con has always been the niggling knowledge in the back of my head that whispered in my ear yearly and told me that I would always be left behind. And I was. The truth unfolded quietly and slyly; I never knew things were changing until it had already happened, like a rug being pulled out from under my feet.Six-year-old Clare discovered her siblings didn’t like playing Blind Man’s Bluff on the trampoline anymore.
Eight-year-old Clare accepted the fact that her siblings would never agree to play tag again.
Ten-year-old Clare saw Raph leave for college and knew the indoor games Raph directed would cease. At 14 her best friend/sister left, at 16 her worst enemy/brother. My siblings grew up so fast, and I was so eager to join them. I puffed up my chest and tripped over my feet to get there, but somehow always felt like I was lagging behind.
In a day I leave the cocoon of my home, where I have tracked my siblings’ adventures and dreamed up my own. In a day I will stand at the door and receive a final blessing and cross the threshold into adventure. It seems almost surreal, because I’ve seen it done so many times before, but always with me in the background. I thought I had my whole life planned, but I only just realized that goodbyes can be so hard, and the future can seem so vast, so mysterious, and so lonely.
Yes, there are perks to being the youngest, but there is always a gentle, yet unrelenting burden pressing on my shoulders. There are pages and pages of stories my siblings have written in our Slattery Book of Life, and mine has always and will always come last, just before the “The End.” Everywhere I go, I leave a wreckage of red stamps that read “Finished.” Everything I do is carried on a wind of nostalgia and is narrated as “the end of an era.” Because of this, in some ways, it feels like I let down the family just by growing up.
My hands hold my childhood tightly tucked inside my heart. There you can find me sailing through the stormy seas of the English Channel on a trusty ship greatly resembling our hammock, or me carrying three antique schoolbooks down our dirt lane to a one-room schoolhouse greatly resembling our chicken shed, or me winning an Olympic gold medal after my killer serve was left unreturned by my Russian opponent, who greatly resembles the side of our white farmhouse.
For me, letting go means giving back. I want every other child to feel the innocence and love I was blessed with as a child. I want to dedicate my life to that cause and follow God blindly and humbly. I just have a lot of work to do on my way.
Like packing. Lots of packing.
sweetridgesisters 