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Lists to remember

While thinking of a way to get 7 people somewhere efficiently, I realized we didn’t have a nice big van anymore. Then I realized the reason we don’t have or need a nice big van anymore is because Yining is married to David now. I know she got married in August. And I’ve seen the pictures, saw them do a ton of couply things, stayed over at their place, gotten to know David, but I guess it’s not about that. It’s that despite me having talked to Yising about how we used to talk about when Yining would get married, her going to college, and all those things, it never really hit me that we were all really growing up. Not even when we started using the pretty food mats because there were 4 of them and 4 of us when Yining was away or when I cried for weeks after she went off to college. Before, she was sort of a little mom, in an unhealthy and sweet way. Yising and I went to her when we cried and thought she was the coolest, prettiest, smartest person ever.

We had a lot of memories in that purple van as a family of 5. My parents bought the 7-seater car when I was born because the family had a new addition and didn’t want the car rides to always be squishy, so it’s over 15 years old and still runs, not counting the air conditioner. We moved from Georgia to California in that adventuremobile (named by Yining) and slept in those seats with the weird fuzzy gray and pink patterns. I read in that car so much while my parents told me it would destroy my eyes. I picked at the plastic handles on the back of the front seats. I stuck my feet in between the cracks of those front seats and made my dad uncomfortable. My oldest sisters’ carpool buddies teased me in there. I yanked at the seat adjuster to help launch my sister for fun. I felt underneath the clear-turned-slightly-gray plastic floor mats with my feet when I was little because it was spiky and felt the sticky broken compartments in the back. Yeah, I spent a lot of time in the back. I pushed my sisters’ feet off my stiff gray armrest often and she did the same. I made stuffed animals wave at people to see them wave back from those windows on road trips and giggled with Yising about it. I got frustrated all the other cars were “beating us” in “the race”. I stuck my nose and fingers out the back side windows that opened in cracks on the bottom and got them stuck when my dad closed them. I looked out the window from my exroom to see it under the ginkgo tree by the curb every day for a long time and the piles of yellow leaves it would collect on its head. I taught people how to close the clunky doors and when I was old and strong enough, I could close it with one hand when those people couldn’t be taught. Yising hugged me for the first time in 3 years and now the last time I can remember when on Yining’s first time driving (it’s a thing). I met David for the first time when he and another guy named Aaron helped Yining move and loaded stuff into that car. I would recognize the adventuremobile anywhere because there’s no other model with that weird shade it’s acquired and big scratch is has on the left side. I always thought our little whale was a very friendly looking thing with all its fat curves and round tall lights. It has excellent speakers.

I forgot about all those memories until I was thinking about that big eggplant now (again, Yining). I didn’t even realize the affection I felt for it. It lives with my sister right now and I see it when she visits, so it’s alive and all. But wow, that fact that we don’t need it anymore and that we’ve moved on to more modern cars is just weird. When it was in its prime, it was in much better shape than the cars we have now. Our cars now are comfortable, but not homey. Their speakers are poor quality, the seats aren’t fuzzy, the floor mats don’t have spiky things, the doors swing open dangerously, they smell like my parents and not us, and they don’t look as friendly as the eggplant. The adventuremobile was more of a home than anything, because it went with us wherever we went and I’ve never been in a house for more than 7 years.

Now my bike is my home because it takes me everywhere. Not my room, because my parents get a huge say in what goes in there and how it’s organized. And in 1 1/2 years Yising will be going to college and I will never be able to talk about the day she’s going to go away to college again. It won’t hit me exactly until I realize I have no more person to split food portioned too largely with, share clothes with (though she borrows mine more), sing songs with, make stupid jokes with, meow with, laugh at things we might feel bitter about otherwise with, exchange advice with, persuade our mom about things with… I won’t have her to cut my hair better than my mom can, to laugh at when she frolicks in my room and bothers me, to go to when I’m crying about our parents, to keep me from dressing horribly, to be the only one with a sense of direction during drives, to hear “meow” from when I ask how her day was, to show off in person to my friends whenever I want, to burp in my face and ears all the time… I won’t miss that last one, though. I’ll be an only child for TWO. WHOLE. YEARS. Maybe one if I can do it. I don’t know how I’ll deal.

During those years alone, the bus and my bike will take me everywhere and maybe those two things will be my home and my home will be everywhere I want to be. Maybe then I’ll realize again that we’ve grown up. I never mean that in a sad, nostalgic way, though. Or at least I wouldn’t like to. It just means that I’ll be on a new stage of life and have so much more to learn again, just when I was getting the hang of being a kid or a teenager or whatever. When Yining left, I turned from a child to a teenager. While Yising is gone, I’ll become a young adult. When I leave, I will become part of another family. And I’ll have a car home.