Memory Post One Week Three

I'm not even in the car ten minutes when someone tells me I should stay an extra day.
I'm home for two nights to watch my sister walk across a stage
and become an adult, but all anyone cares about is who's going to sit where
and where I'm going to be staying. My parents, divorced a year, planned back to back
events. My grandparents, separated since my dad's 30's, brought their own travel buddies
and staying in separate camps. I cried myself to sleep that night.
Half from the anxiety of sitting cross legged in front of the gate to Atlanta
for three hours and half from the railroading in an Acura.
I fell asleep to the sound of her breathing, her calm in and out breath,
mirroring three years ago, when she watched me walk across a similar stage
on a similar field, and sitting in front of the similar turf the next morning,
wearing a red and black polka dotted dress and staring at a picture of me and my friend,
I'm not really here. I'm there, on the field at the 50 yard line, imagining college,
aching to be away from high school but not home. She's aching to be away from both,
but not me. I'm her rock, and she's mine. Remembering her feet off the ground, my hands
at her shoulders, screaming about some small s and t pronunciation, grates at me now.
Grateful for the separation, she runs to me, but I'm running to her, to that green gown
that clashes against her blue dress and my shoes, to that cap with an Alabama A.