One of the dubious side effects of living so far away from home is that I have not managed to see a single one of my siblings graduate from high school. I'm not proud of that, but the truth is that when you live across the country, you just can't come home for everything, not even all the really important things. So you do what you can and hope that your family believes you when you say you would be there in a heartbeat if you could.
One way I have found to participate in the graduations has been through the annual Senior Roast my family's church in Hattiesburg hosts. This is an evening dedicated to honoring the graduates with a nice meal, and then letting their families get up and show off their most embarrassing baby pictures on a projector screen while telling equally embarrassing childhood stories. It's a great tradition. And every year, since I can't attend, I write a letter to the sibling who is being roasted which is read aloud by my dad during the evening's festivities. Here is the letter I wrote for my baby sister Audrey.
First, here she is in her beautiful senior portrait, taken by our sister Hannah's insanely talented photographer boyfriend, Daniel Meigs. I like to think of this post as mine and Daniel's collaborative project, like if we were musicians and wrote a song together. Except that I would not be cool enough to be on Daniel's record label.
Dear Audrey,
Well, this clinches it. I am officially older than dirt if you’re graduating from high school. I’m sure that if I were there, you would tell me that I am, in fact, old. And then you would laugh in that way that you have always done because you are the baby of the family and you know you can get away with it. But you see, the joke is on you.
When Hannah’s roast came up a couple of years ago, I told her she was really in trouble, because while I only vaguely remember Ryan and Aaron’s early years, since they so closely coincided with my own, I was at least seven years old when she was born, and so had clear memories of her as a kid.
So here’s the bad news: By the time you arrived, I was nine-and-a-half years old and in full possession of my faculties. I could probably write a very detailed book about you. This is bad if you consider it embarrassing to have childhood stories told about you in public.
The good news is that it would be a danged funny book, and I would make lots of money, because from the moment you were born, you have been one of the most entertaining members of our very entertaining family.
When you were born, as I have mentioned, I was nine. This means that Aaron and Ryan were something like six years old, and Hannah couldn’t have been more than two and a half. We were a big group as it was, and we fell along pretty predictable battle lines. I was the oldest, and bossed everyone around in a completely insufferable manner. Aaron and Ryan functioned as a unit, sometimes friendly toward me, sometimes hostile, but always essentially a country unto themselves. All of us persecuted Hannah, who in turn got her revenge by tattling to Mom. Thus ran the drama of our daily lives, and while there was a lot of yelling and hair-pulling, everyone was basically happy with their job. So when you showed up, I think we were all at a loss as to what role you could possibly play in the family.
That’s why, for the first 18 months of your life, we treated you like an exotic pet. It helped that you were cute, with chubby cheeks and riotously curly hair, and that you allowed us to carry you around and dress you up. We were happy with the arrangement, because it required no real adjustment on our part, and you didn’t put up any kind of a fuss, so we thought you were happy too.
But all that changed one day, and when it did, the balance of power in the family changed forever.
On the fateful day in question, all us kids were sitting in the den of our house in Yazoo City, Mississippi, watching TV. Aaron and Ryan were sitting up close to the television in these little folding chairs we had, and you, too young to be very engaged by the program we were watching, were wandering around the room finding things to play with. Someone had recently given mom a gift of candy stuffed into one of those oversized coffee mugs. The candy was gone, but the mug was sitting on the windowsill, and you picked it up and started waddling around the room with it. It was a pretty heavy mug, at least a pound or so, and you were kind of leaned over from the exertion of trying to carry it. I mention the size and weight of the mug mainly to explain why Aaron thought he should take it away from you, but hang on to that piece of information, because it becomes important later.
Aaron took the mug from you and put it somewhere where he thought you couldn’t reach it and went back to watching television. You didn’t act upset about it, and you didn’t say anything, since you still weren’t talking very much, probably because you had the four of us trained to act as your personal footmen all the time, so why would you feel the need to communicate? At any rate, you didn’t really react at all when he took the mug away from you, which is what made what came next so startling.
You stood there a minute, first eyeing Aaron, and then the mug. Then you started waddling your little diapered butt back over to where the mug was. You got it in hand and turned to make your slow, burdened way back across the living room. None of us thought anything of it, least of all Aaron, who has his back turned to you. Eventually, you got back to your starting point, and walked right up behind Aaron.
What surprises me the most in retrospect is that even when you started raising the mug up over your head, none of us figured out what you were planning to do. And that’s how come we were all watching when you reared back and brought that solid ceramic mug down on the top of Aaron’s head with a horrible thud.
Given how loud Aaron screamed, you would expect a baby like yourself to be startled. You, however, were clearly prepared for this reaction, and remained totally unmoved as the predictable chaos ensued. Aaron cried, I started bossily telling you that we don’t hit people on the head with mugs, Hannah ran to tell Mom, and no doubt you were punished in some way. But you had made your point – “Don’t take my mug, people” – and had simultaneously told us just exactly what role you had planned out for yourself: The new boss. Or, as Dad took to calling you “Audgie Mo Paudge, Queen of the Audgie Paudgies.” In your version of the family drama, you were going to be the royalty, and we would play your humble servants.
Shortly after this, you started talking. It probably seemed like a strategic time to verbally assert your dominance. One of your first and most frequent pronouncements was to say “My mama” while mom was holding you. This was meant as a warning, telling the rest of us that if we thought for a single minute that we were going to manage to wrestle Mom’s undivided attention away from you, we were clearly delusional and perhaps we would like a nice mug to the back of the head. From then on, it was pretty clear that it was your world, and we were all just living in it.
So the family drama was altered. I still bossed everyone around, and Aaron and Ryan were still their own little nation, and Hannah was still relentlessly persecuted. But you were really the one in charge, and we knew it. I make it sound like you were spoiled, but really it wasn’t that, because you never took full advantage in the way you no doubt could have done. You just came into the world as a very confident person, and that’s something I think we all admired about you from the start. We still do.
I tell people all the time that I was so lucky to have four siblings, because nobody in the whole world can make me laugh like y’all can now that we’re done pulling each other’s hair and tattling. It’s been really fun in the last few years to get to know you as the exceedingly cool person that you are.
Still, you’re always going to be my baby sister. You’re graduating high school and I fully expect that you’re headed for new adventures that will be more fun than anything you’ve ever done. But I hope you will keep my number programmed into your cell phone, because when you get to the parts of life that are hard, I’ll always be happy to talk to you, any time, day or night. I am not the smartest person you know, but I am almost ten years old than you, and it turns out that when you’re an adult, being bossy is called “giving advice.” In a few years, you can make it up to me by giving my daughter advice when she doesn’t want to listen to me anymore. The two of you can talk about what a fossil I am, and I’m sure you’ll make her laugh. She’s going to think you’re the coolest person ever. I do.
I love you, Audgie.
Your big sister,
Haley
