sad-a-tude-athon day 32: joni

Today my sister moves to Miami. I feel like she might as well be moving to Mars. Because the fact is, she will no longer be able to stop by on her way to a doctor’s appointment, and her husband Frank will no longer pop up at Ally’s soccer games as a surprise, and we will no longer be able to go to her house, a few blocks from funky Nantasket Beach, and have our epic sleepovers and our movie marathons, and swim in her neighbor Pauline’s pool, and cook, and laugh our heads off. Nope, no more. And the sadness I feel is so overwhelming, so big, so all-encompassing, I have been pretending it was not going to happen. But today is the day. With my parents being gone for so long (as in dead and gone), Joni and I are a lot of family to each other. We are both movie fanatics, both writers, both a little bit crazy.

We sort of look alike, we sort of talk alike, and we sort of think alike, too. And, of course, we are two of the people in the world who know what it was like to grow up in our town, our house, our crazy family. I love her in a way that gives me context in the world. Sometimes I think if she didn’t exist, I wouldn’t exist either. She was my idol when I was little, and frequently swindled me into doing things for her because of that. She once cut my waist length hair up to my chin, while my parents were out, and I let her sheerly for the attention (She was grounded for a month). She went to Woodstock, lived on Malibu Beach, where I spent three weeks with her before my senior year of high school and started my life-long love affair with California. She has had a super adventurous life. She tried her hand at becoming an actress, has traveled extensively, and lived in lots of places, including England, where she was married to a warm and lovely British actor, who she is still best friends with, although no longer married to. She has worked as a writer for the past 16 years, remarried one of the nicest guys there is, Frank (Who was a sports reporter for the Globe for 20 years, but is the reason she’s moving, because he was offered a great job at BeIn Sports, a new all-soccer tv station and website, and did I mention he is a SOCCER ENCYCLOPEDIA–GOOGLE’S GOT NUTHIN’ ON FRANK.) in a weeklong celebration in Venice, Italy. (Where the Italian Justice of the Peace pronounced her married at “eh, about 12:00–so precise, those Italians!) I am proud of all she has accomplished. There is nobody that can make me laugh, nobody that knows what I’m thinking or feeling, and nobody that understands me quite so well as my sister Joni. She, quite simply,  has always been there. When I graduated from high school, college, got married, had my kids, (Right there, by the way!) She has offered me support, loved my kids as if they were hers. I feel  like a death has occurred when I think about her not being in her house anymore. So dramatic, you say? But it’s honestly how I feel. The end of the something has begun.  It never occurred to me that we wouldn’t one day be old ladies (with our dyed brown hair), with her in her beachy house, and me just an hour away. And yet, I am happy for her to be in warm weather and for Frank to have a job that uses so much of his insane soccer knowledge. But, for me, it’s nothing but awful. I see no sparkly silver lining here. And while I’m grateful, over-the-top grateful, to have Joni in my life, I am terribly unhappy that she is moving. Today. To Miami. I’ve never been particularly good at transitions. I don’t have much talent when it comes to seeing that just because things change, doesn’t mean they can’t be good, or even better than they were. Because you know, maybe Miami will be fun. And I will visit often and be able to stop my near constant whining about HOW COLD IT IS HERE IN THE WINTER. Maybe. Maybe. But more than likely, I will cry for a long, long, LONG, LONG  time before that happens, and the only good that will come of it, is that my tears might help melt some of the nine fucking feet of snow in front of my house.