84. For Ari

Nora’s niece wrote a poignant poem for their younger sibling. It was a way for her to bridge the void that often grows when we grow up, and grow away from our siblings. 

Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.

INTRO MUSIC

I’m Nora McInerny  and it’s going to be okay.

Nora: Tell me who you are. 

Trixie: My name is Trixie Wilker. I’m a 17 year old girl. And that’s it. That’s it. That’s it. ,

Nora: Tell me about your sibling. 

Trixie: My sibling Ari is 14 years old, probably. Around there, and they are, we’re, I wouldn’t necessarily say we’re very close, but I think as far as siblings go, we do have a very good relationship.
Like when I heard about other people’s siblings, like chasing them around the house with knives, I was like, what the fuck?  Because  the biggest drama that ever happened between us was I got a tetanus shot and they punched me where I got my shot, and my dad told him to do that, so it wasn’t even of their own free will.

Nora: How old were you? 

Trixie: 14 maybe. Mm-hmm. But yeah, , they are, they’re weird. They’re a weirdo. I, I worry about them cuz they’re so weird. But they’re so delicate. They’re a lover. They’re a lover till the end. And I’m like, oh, like I remember reading like my mom reading us a book when we were kids where like the mom died and Ari just started like sobbing and bawling.

And I just remember being really annoyed cause I was like, it’s not real and I want to hear this story. And I was like, stop crying. And my mom was like, Trixie, let them cry. Yeah. Ari has been more, they’ve been. More emotionally soft than me our entire lives, I would say. 

Trixie is my niece, and I can say with certainty that what she says about Ari is true. Ari is, and always has been soft and open-hearted with these huge dough eyes, and Trixie also has dough eyes, but she would use them to shoot daggers at me every time I saw Trixie when she was little. It was like starting from zero.

Nora: I used to like just prepare to be rejected by you, but I respect it. I really do. I respect it. I know.

Trixie: I’ve had boundaries since day one. 

Nora: You have.

Trixie: I’ve always been a boundary setter. I would get hurt that my mom would try to comfort me and I’d be like, go away. I’d be so mad, but then I’d be mad if no one like checked up on me after that.

Nora: I have known you your whole life, but have always in my mind at least been a person who was very protective of Ari and very loving towards Ari, even if you were annoyed by Ari. 

Trixie: Yeah. Well, yeah, I’ve tried and honestly, the times that I’ve been the worst of them, I didn’t even really mean to do it. It just happened like when they were calling up my bunk, they, I was on the top bunk. They were calling up the ladder. I said, don’t come up here, so let that be known. I said, don’t do it. They came up, I didn’t think about like gravity and stuff like that. I meant to just give them a little shove to be like, get down, you know? And they just tumbled to the floor and like hit their head and started vomiting and they had to go to the er. Except they had had like blueberries for breakfast, but they vomited up whole blueberries. And while they were at the ER, my dad and me walk around the house and collect all the blueberries from like the corners of the hallways.

In my twenties when Ari and Trixie were very small, I would sometimes get to babysit them for days at a time when their parents were traveling for work. And Trixie was so loving and so kind to little Ari, so protective. That’s how I see her to this day. An older sister, making sure that Ari’s shoes are tied, that Ari is tucked in correctly, that Auntie Nora packed the right lunch, but neither of them are little anymore. They’re both in high school. Trixie has a job.

Nora: Um, when did you write this poem for Ari? 

Trixie: I wrote this poem for Ari sometime during this school year. I wanna say maybe be, I wanna say between December and February sometime in that three month range. 

Nora: Do you remember like what inspired you to do it?

Trixie: I know that something had happened where Ari had been talking to me or something. Then I went into my room and then I like closed the door of my room. And then I was thinking about Ari and I was thinking about how often we see each other and stuff. And I was like, I feel like the most, like the most that they see of me is just my closed door.

Nora: Mm-hmm. Will you read me the poem?

Trixie: If I can find it? Yes.

It’s in my notes app and there’s everything in here.

There’s poems, there’s drawing of my Little Pony that I did. That’s really good. There’s um, there’s to-do lists. Um, there are some numbers that I don’t know what they mean, but anyways, um, I found it. 

Should I just go for it? Okay. 

“I’m letting the ground swallow me. 

My core will connect with the earth and my fingers will twist into bark. 

Tell me, does the sun hold you 

light through leaves modeled as memory 

rain ghosting through your reflection, 

misty melancholy, let it remind you of my closed bedroom door. 

Inside the soft earth, I lay open my heart.

Finally, the warmest part. Do you see me? 

I’m holding out my limbs unfurling branch after branch. I

will lift you up to the sky. I will help you hold the sun.”

Nora: What did that poem mean to you?”

Trixie: I just wanted to let them know that I sort of acknowledge that I know I can be distant, but that I still like, I always wanna be there for them, and I want them to know that I’ll always be someone that they can come to and that they can talk to, and I do my best to let them know that.

I think it comes off a little bit forceful sometimes. I’m like, tell me every thought you’ve ever had in your life right now. Yeah. And also, I don’t know, they’re just kind of in a phase right now also where they don’t think I’m that cool. Like I’ll be like, let’s hang out, let’s go do this. And they’ll be like, um, I’m on Discord with my friends. Okay. What about real life with your sister? Let’s talk about this

This is the most awkward part of growing up with a sibling, with this person who is so familiar to you, whose blueberry vomit you have picked up from the floor, who becomes, in many ways a stranger. There’s this part of them that will always be behind a door somewhere unknowable to you. But even so, Trixie wants Ari to know that she is there, that Ari will never be alone.

Trixie: And then I texted that to them and they never said anything back. And I texted ’em again. I said, did you read the poem? And they said, yeah, it made me sad. And I was like, okay, okay.

Sometimes the people we love and create for don’t get it, but maybe someday, Ari will, maybe soon even, they’ll knock on their sister’s door and find her waiting limbs, unfurled. Ready to hold them up to the sun. 

OUTRO MUSIC 

I’m Nora McInerny and it’s going to be okay. We love hearing your okay things. You can email us.

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CREDITS