Article by Sophia Murphy Art by Willa Schendler
It’s something you always think is there. That pink scarf you loved when you were seven. The stuffed animal monkey you got for Christmas when you were twelve. Your collection of Barbies. The Frozen songbook you would place above the piano. Or maybe an old iPod touch with Minecraft and Temple Run, with a home button too sticky with maple syrup to actually click. You’re a little anxious walking down. But you can visualize exactly where you packed it away, leaving it behind. You’re in the basement, ready for the relief.
Myles left first. He went away to Michigan. On our last night, I cried silently in the hotel room.
You’re not immediately disappointed; you frantically throw things around, digging, almost pleading. Where is it? You’re tearing through old field hockey gear and orchestra programs from middle school while stepping on an old LEGO set as you continue to stumble over your past in boxes. The basement is disheveled, and you’re wondering how you could’ve messed this up. You’re regretful of your poor memory, maybe your poor organization, or a misguided belief that something you had left would be waiting for you.
I got the next two years of high school with Joe. When he left, I cried in his bed for hours after he drove off to Connecticut.
You’re frustrated, probably sweating, and regretful for ever throwing things down there. You’re on the brink of a breakdown until it transitions into defeat — realizing you didn’t have a choice. You grew up. You moved. You changed. And through all of that, some things had to be left behind.
Right now we’re in our twenties, miles apart. But one day we’ll be in our forties, living thirty minutes away, and our kids will be best friends. Maybe we won’t have children, and we’ll go over to our parents' house every Sunday to play games and have brunch. We’ll bicker and banter like our younger selves. We’ll have a bar where we meet up once a week, where we keep each other in our lives.
Maybe living close to each other is too much of a dream. Maybe we’ll live far away, but at least we can still visit. We can book flights to each other’s homes, our kids will get along, and we’ll still love each other. We’ll try to call and text. We’ll have days of fun together. Maybe we can even vacation in Florida with our families and Mom and Dad. And maybe we’ll be content with that. Maybe life is grieving everything you’ve lost, but one day you realize that you should start being grateful for your new experiences.
Because we’ll never be elementary school kids again, running into each other on the way down the stairs when Mom calls “Dinner!” We’ll never wrestle on the couch until someone is genuinely hurt and crying and yelling for our parents to yell at the other sibling. We’ll probably never turn our dining room into an epic dance floor for our Friday nights, consisting of talent shows for each other. We’ll never have this house where our possibilities are endless, where we are fiercely protected, and where we are unconditionally cared for by our parents. We’ll never have another brothers’ sleepover over school break where we all get to stay in the same room — what I always looked forward to most. I don’t remember the jokes we made before bed, but I know I felt like the luckiest girl in the world getting to hang out with them.
You can keep digging in that basement and try to find everything you’ve lost. But it’s all too heavy, the force of change and growing up preventing you from ever fully making it up the stairs.
It was my turn to leave. It was 2023, and my family was going to Burlington for the city’s Fourth of July festival. A trip we took every year, but this time it was different. The world around me felt like it was shifting. Joe had been gone for the first time, and Myles was going to be back for his last summer before adulthood. Instead of allowing the impending doom of college to pull me out of the moment, I was grounded in the two people next to me, sweating as profusely as I was. Myles, Joe, and I danced until the sun set on the bay to an 80s cover band. For four whole hours, we danced to the slow rock at the beginning, and then, by the end of the night, to what felt like a punk rock moshpit concert alongside three-year-olds and grandparents. I knew half the words to every song, and at times, we were the only ones in front of the band. Nothing mattered except to keep dancing with each other until the music stopped.
When I miss my childhood and fear the future, I look back to that night in Vermont. When so much changed and would continue changing. What I had with the two people next to me was dizzingly stable. For that night, it felt like we were back in our dining room, spinning and jumping around to Lady Gaga and LMFAO as if we were our ten-year-old selves once again. And maybe that’s who we’ll always be, no matter the distance or time apart. We might no longer grow up holding each other’s hands in every picture, but I’ll never stop holding onto my two older brothers in life.
Growing up with Myles and Joe was the best gift life could have ever given me, even if they acted like they didn’t know me in the hallways at school. It’s a gift that sits in a box in the very back of my basement, buried under my mom’s wedding dress and dusty books. A box that must remain inaccessible but unconditionally present.