Hugs and Kisses

Tomorrow, my little brother and sister will turn seventeen. They have jobs and drivers licenses and interests in the other sex. They will be seniors in high school come August. This all freaks me out just a little.

After giving birth, Mom was laid up in bed, exhausted and whatever else women are after having twins. I was six years old. I'd just finished kindergarten, was going to start first grade in the fall. I don't know what Gaetano was doing with his time. Dad, obviouly, was at work.

Mom and Dad had decided to use reusable cloth diapers from a service in lieu of the disposable ones they'd had for Gaetano and me. I don't know if it was the diaper service or the hospital who'd given it, but as I was wandering one day, alone as far as I can remember, bored because those tiny human apostrophes were sleeping, I found an instructional video. How to strap the baby seat in the car. How to burp, I think. And how to fold the cloth diapers.

I guess this is the long of way of telling you that I was the first one at home to change Nick and Anna's diapers. I remember teaching Mom how to do it. Honestly, for all I know, Mom and Dad had done it before and were humoring me, or maybe I just don't remember this well at all. But anyway.

We pushed them around in a twins stroller, a long basket in which they could both lay down. It was a light sky blue, the color you see behind wispy clouds. There was a mosquito net. I remember a day many years later when we all gathered to look at that stroller, and nobody could comprehend how those two were ever tiny enough to fit inside. I still can't imagine it.

We have pictures of their first birthday, when Nick blietzkrieged his cake and Anna negotiated with hers like a one-year old Neville Chamberlain.

I look at recent photos of them, remembering their dirty and dainty birthday faces, and can't help but wonder what the hell's been going on in the past sixteen years that made them decide to grow up.

Anna is still short. When I was in college, if, when I would call home, Anna answered, conversations were often like this:

Hello?
Hey, kiddo, how's it going?
Good.
Still short?
Yup.
Alright. That's all I needed, talk to you later.

One time she actually said, "Okay," and hung up on me.

Nick is gangly; skinny, but muscling out (at least since the last time I saw him). He and I used to lean on the counter in front of the answering machine, thinking of stupid shit to record. If you called us anytime in the past five or six years, you probably heard some of it.

The point is, seventeen is no longer a little kid, though it's not the adult they think it is. But for some reason, no matter how big they get (save Anna), they are always, in some way or another, the tiny little babies sitting in that stroller, in diapers I likely folded around them.

I love those kids. I once made a list of the people in my life I loved the most. Number one was Grandma. Tied for second were those two.

Happy birthday, kiddos. I miss you like hell, and then some.