By Sarah Skalitzky

How do I tell a story about my family when I can barely remember a time when we were all together?

Driving home from class, that’s all I can think about. I’m searching a place in my brain where a story should be, but all I can see is a dark empty hole.

Watering the flowers at the greenhouse, I continue to grasp for an idea of what to write. I keep thinking about that photo, the one that hung on the wall at the top of the stairs in my childhood home. The family photo of a father and his three children, a mother of one, and stepmother of two others. A missing child who wasn’t born yet.  I always wanted to take a new picture, one that I could be in, too, but life was more complicated by the time I was thinking those thoughts, and the six of us would never pose for a photo together.

It’s not a story. I have to write a story. As I deadhead the geraniums I’m searching through my childhood memories. Memories of Meghan making pancakes after Karen and I woke her up by jumping up and down and throwing Legos on the kitchen floor above her basement bedroom. Memories of finding a dead mouse in Meghan’s bed. Memories that aren’t really memories, but photos that I’ve seen or stories that I’ve been told. Like the time my arm was accidentally removed from the socket when Meghan pulled me up onto the bed to play with her and Karen.

David isn’t in these memories.

Sweet Surrender by Sarah McLachlan starts to play in my ear bud and I immediately think of Karen. Forget the rest of the family, I should just write about Karen. She has always been my best friend. She was the one I looked up to, the one I wanted to be just like. She taught me what music to like, what sports to play, what clothes to wear, what instrument to play. We have millions of memories, millions of stories to tell. What story can I tell that wraps up our relationship in only 800 words? I think of the time I traded her homemade button in gym class, the pit in my stomach the whole way to Illinois that night knowing that I had to tell her what I did. The advice she gave me while we were on vacation when I was 8 and she was 12, advice to be myself and not worry about what others think of it. The advice that she should have taken for herself, instead of living most of her life trying to be and do what she was supposed to be and do, and finally figuring out in her 30s who she really was. I think of the time that I accidentally told my mom she was dating a woman, essentially outing her to my parents, a few weeks before she was planning to tell them herself.

My mom. I can’t write a story about family without talking about my mom. Or my Dad. Where do I start? I feel stunted by thinking of who they are now, unable to really remember who they were when I was young. When they were young.

I keep coming back to that picture. I keep thinking about the family that wasn’t there more than the family that was. I keep thinking about David. I think about the years that he didn’t speak to my dad, and how he didn’t want to be part of our family. I think about the life that he has lived, so different from mine. I wonder how things would be different if he was raised by my dad instead of his mom. Would he have made different choices in life? Would he have rebelled against our dad’s strict conservative values? Would we have a relationship if we had ever lived together? Would he have left the house for good as soon as he turned 18, when I was only 4, or would he have returned for holidays and summer breaks to see his little sisters?

I sit down to write, scribbling drafts of essays about my family. Feeling defeated. I’m still searching for a story.

© 2024 Sarah Skalitzky

Sarah Skalitzky – Madison, WI
Architect | Writer | Musician | Quilter/Crafter | Gardener
Daughter | Sister | Wife | Friend | Dog Mom