| 000. staring at this yellow haired girl |
[06 Mar 2008|01:46am] |
When Alexa was born, Ari was told to be very still around the baby. He had to step lightly and use his inside voice so he wouldn't wake her, was told to play gently and not grab at his toys when she would snatch them up. He was supposed to be reverent and careful at all times, and to quietly relinquish his parents' undivided attention, but still Ari was fascinated. He learned to tiptoe in the nursery so he could stand at her crib, craning his neck upward, and watch her sleeping through the narrow bars. And later, when they were both older, at night when she cried and her face twisted up in anger and frustration, Ari would climb out of his big-boy bed and go to the nursery and poke his finger through the bars, and she would curl her little hand around it tightly and be quieted, and Ari would smile and stay until she fell asleep again.
As soon as he was old enough to understand what it meant, Ari had assigned himself Lex's personal watchdog--a job that was necessary partly because Lex's energy was so addicting that Ari followed her around just to bask in it, and partly because what terrible thing might befall his sister if he wasn't there to gently lift her down off the coffee table before she slipped trying to chase the family cat across it? For most of his childhood, he couldn't bear to be separated from her for long (the approximate length of one little league game was his usual breaking point) without either worrying about her or mourning the loss of her otherwise constant presence. As he got older, Ari began to realize that most of what he'd learned about life had been through Lex's curiosity, either by action or prevention, and as a result he found that he didn't need to see if he could fit his arm through the banister, because Lex had already proven he couldn't without struggle and injury.
The more Lex grew out into the world, the more Ari withdrew from it and into his own mind, not out of pain or repression, but because he never saw it as quite the playground Lex did, didn't have that same desire to do it all before he died, didn't have Lex's magical filter on his eyes that turned every uncharted corner into an area of opportunity. Going out on the water was as much an adventure as he was willing to partake in, and even the ocean seemed more an extension of his home than anything else. In spite of himself, however, he often found himself tagging along with Lex and her friends, the unspoken chaperone and unwilling partner in crime, quietly living vicariously through her even as he tried to balance keeping her safe with letting her roam free. It was a hard lesson the day he learned she didn't really need him to watch over her anymore, that in fact she had become as adept at getting out of trouble as she was getting into it.
After that, Ari relaxed somewhat, and he guessed that Lex was probably grateful not to have a second dad following her around. He was able to spend hours at a time working on the boat with his father without keeping Lex at arm's reach, and though he silently pursued this and other challenges, his attention never strayed very far from home until the day that home as he knew it was turned on its head. He found himself untethered without his father as the anchor, and for the first time in his life Ari started to wander, both on land and on the boat, restless to find that comfortable stability again, which was itself a discordant sentiment. After solitary processing, Ari gravitated back to Lex and his mother, as recovered as could be expected, though with a renewed attachment to his home and his family and the brand new intention to pick up where his father had left off with the family fishing business.
On restless nights, Ari still recalls every sticky situation Lex has ever gotten him into, and he wonders if he has had more than a moment's peace since she was born. It is only when he recalls those nights he fell asleep in her room when she was still a baby that Ari realizes that he never had a moment's peace until she was born, and that though he prefers the silence of solitude to almost anything else, he still counts Lex as a rare exception to this and many other things he has decided to be true about the universe.
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![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) southfork |
[05 Mar 2008|12:18pm] |
crazy as can be, yeah
but she's alright with me
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