Dear my lovely lady,
So remember that time like three weeks ago when Alina told me I should start sharing things with my family?
Well, I finally worked up the guts to do it.
And it wasn't as bad as I thought.
The day she told me that, I was determined to go talk to my dad when he got home from work. I was going to just go downstairs and ask him how his day was or tell him about how annoying my trig teacher was, but he didn't come home that night because he had a work party or something.
The next night, I wasn't in the mood because I had a shitty lacrosse game. The night after that I was at my mom's house, so I thought I could just talk to her, but I knew she would be annoying if I opened up to her and have a whole goddamn family meeting and I wanted to avoid that at least for the time being.
A week passed and I kind of forgot about it, between the late work nights and homework and Alina, it never crossed my mind. Then two weeks, then three and suddenly, nothing had changed. It was always in the back of my mind even if I didn't know it. To be completely honest, I think my ability to socialize and sympathize with my family was impaired because I just couldn't connect with them.
Tonight, I forced a connection, as difficult as it was.
When I got home from practice today, Jules was doing her homework at the kitchen table and looked like she was having a hard time. At first, I completely ignored it and grabbed the Pringles from the cabinet and was ready to go upstairs when she said "Grant, do you know how to divide fractions?"
"I think so," I said, popping open the Pringles can.
"Can you help me with this? I'm really confused." She said, scratching her head.
I put down the Pringles and went over to sit next to her. "You do the keep change flip thing." I said.
"What do I flip?"
"The second fraction," I motioned to the problem on her paper. "Instead of three fourths it's four thirds."
"Oh I get it." She said, quickly scribbling the rest of the problem out. "I don't have to have common denominators right?"
"Nah, just multiply them." I said, smiling as she wrote out her sevens with the hook on them like I did. "My teachers used to hate when I wrote my sevens like that, they said they looked like bad nines."
"Oh my gosh, Mrs. Morley yells at me for writing my sevens like this!"
"Oh god, you have Mrs. Morley? I thought she would be dead by now."
She giggled. "I think she taught Abraham Lincoln."
I laughed. "Right?"
I watched as she finished the rest of her homework, asking me small questions along the way. It reminded me of when Will used to help me with my homework. I used to get so frustrated with it but he was always so calm when he helped me. Jules was patient like him, and she had that same curiosity for learning that he had and I lacked.
All these years I had been missing Will, when I had Jules here the whole time. No, she wasn't the same older brother role model Will was, but I had to be her Will now. I couldn't sit around and complain about him not being here anymore, I had to step up and give my little sister someone she could come to whenever she needed anything. Today helped me realize that.
The flame didn't go out, the torch was just passed.
-Grant