I’m walking up the sidewalk to our brown, three-bedroom condo. I’ve lived here for so many years that I can’t even remember the day we moved in. I know that sidewalk, steps and porch so well that I could easily walk them blind. As I pause at the door to search for my key in my purse, I get a whiff of the familiar dryer sheet smell that is flowing from the vent near the porch. It’s a comforting smell, one that most people would overlook. But I’ve always noticed it. I gaze up at the same old gray Connecticut sky. The cool breeze that frequents early spring in the Northeast whips my windbreaker around my shoulders and leaks through the sleeves, causing me to shiver. My day at school was pretty typical, although I didn’t do as well in all of my classes as I wanted to. I’m behind in my outlining for history, which is usually the most lacking area of my schoolwork because I dread it so much.
Tonight I am supposed to go out for a mid-week dinner and then to the gym, but play rehearsal ran over. It’s getting late, and I have so much work ahead of me this evening. What began as an ordinary day is now anything but ordinary. The breeze feels like a fierce, wintry gust. My head hurts, my liveliness faded to a shade of tired. It’s too much. I can’t do it anymore. I struggle to turn the key in the door when it swings wide open.
There she stands, her little body clad in Osh-Koshes that have Pooh on them, her long brown curls free and flowing down her back to her waist. She lets me put her hair up very rarely; she prefers it to be let alone to do what it wants. She’s wise beyond her years. Her eyes remind me of milk chocolate with a fleck of summer sunshine in them. They retain the gentle radiance of summer long after the leaves have fallen off the trees and have been replaced with frigid snow. But it’s her smile that I notice. Her smile never ceases to amaze me. It lights up her face with an innocent and happy luminescence. It’s a contagious smile. “Gaga is home!” She’s called me that name since she first started talking. She’s put behind her all of the other baby names for friends and family, but mine sticks. That’s because I’m her favorite sister, her favorite person. Well, that’s what she tells me and I choose not to acknowledge that she’s only four and doesn’t understand yet what the depths of the word “favorite” are. I understand what it means, so I can legitimately say that she’s my favorite. Though she may not understand the extremity in this word, she sure understands me.
Her little arms wrap around me as I hug the little girl whom I still call, “Baby.” Only when she misbehaves do I use her real name. Though she’s at that age when babies no longer are babies and want to be “big girls,” she never corrects me. And only when she’s upset with me does she ever use my actual name. With that one gesture, everything’s okay again. She puts a butterfly kiss on my cheek. Then come the sweetest words you could ever hear, which could easily be mistaken for the sound of an angel: “I missed you.” Isn’t it funny how with one simple display of affection, everything turns around? The world suddenly seems okay and I can no longer find a reason to be tired. And even though when that moment is over, the toils and troubles of life return, it’s always waiting for me at my front door. All I have to do is turn the key.
Kathryn Litzenberger