The Boudreaux Girls
I should warn you. I don’t know what’s going to happen here, but it probably won’t be funny.
[From the future: Yep! Circling back around to let you know that I was right about this.]
Me and my immediates moved from Lake Charles to Houston when I was around two years old. We lived in a cute little house on Sandswept Lane. This row of houses quite possibly had the greatest collaboration of grown up neighbors who loved each other and helped each other, and a pretty awesome crew of kids who played hard together all the time. Truly a neighborly neighborhood, as far as my little eyes could see. [And yes, I do realize that sandswept is a dreamy word that exists very comfortably in my vocabulary, and is made even better by having to be capitalized. I’m so glad you noticed.]
When I came on the scene, Nichole’s I became our us, and we have been that for the rest of our lives. The first official Boudreaux girls, and ready to initiate. Andrea and Monique were admitted into our crew while we were in Houston, and with the two of them came so much more beauty than we could’ve imagined.
With Andrea came a lifetime of knowledge and wisdom and confusion and pain and gladness and misunderstanding and fear and the truth of what matters in this world…
…and I was three.
I don’t remember her being born, or mom being pregnant even, but I remember the first of our family talks. We had several of these in Houston. The next one was pretty light comparatively when dad caught mom smoking a cigarette and thought we should all discuss that. The next was when I was eight and they told us they were getting a divorce [yes, the cigarette talk happened before I was eight, so yeah]. Also, light comparatively.
This one though, the first of my life, I remember like a dream. I honestly don’t remember fully if I remember, or if I’ve made up the dream sequence in my head. It’s pretty blurry, and it doesn’t feel like it belongs to me. Mom was fine, but the baby was going to stay in the hospital for a while. She might come home, she might not. She might live, but she’ll probably die.
I don’t have much concept of time for a while after this. Andrea did come home. I’m not sure they knew what the deal was at that point. She was so small, and had a lot of things that were keeping her alive.
She had a feeding tube and round-the-clock nurses that lived with us, a trek and “breathing machines” [what is known by many as a ventilator, and by myself now, much later, as a pretty intense trigger]. She was legally blind, deaf, she never spoke or walked, and she was always sick. Always. Actually, I’m pretty sure my parents were on a first name basis with the EMTs who came by to pick her up so often that it felt like the visits were scheduled.
She was beautiful, smiling almost every second of her life. She loved the color red. I think it might have been the only one she could really see, but it lit her up. She knew us, and her excited face was a really good one.
My parents were children in their early early twenties, and I cannot imagine being one of them. And every moment in time after that was an impressive attempt by two little kids to handle all this shit, and the other two kids, and oh yeah, then Mom was pregnant again.
Thank God those two weren’t clouded by the safe judgement that would’ve caused us to miss Monique. She is the breath of fresh air that saved us. She came in fresh-faced and full of fire, adorable with dark dark brown curly tendrils of hair so perfect that she looked like a little painting.
She was not afraid of the machines, she was not afraid to play with her littlest sister, or to beat up her bigger sisters [who remain weak in comparison to her]. She was not plagued by the fear that existed in the rest of us. We needed her right then, and there she was. And she is that kind of *on-time when you need her* now too. She is beautiful and fearless and amazing still.
I’m going to stop here for now… so we can all catch our breath. Might be just me. Take a minute if you need to. Go stand outside, and see if you can watch the wind a little more easily. This is how I came to find it.
wrenchings of the heart
quieted
by what seems
so insignificant
that it is hardly
regarded
at all
there is always
peace in the trees
there is always peace
always in everything
and in every moment
there is peace
breathe it in
be still
know peace
and see it
in everything
and everywhere
and be it
for the others
who cannot see it yet
Yellow Submarine, my friends? Hysterical. I hope I amuse you, as much as I do myself.
