When a tiny trigger makes a big impact

This one made me cry (but what's new, everything makes me cry!)

Do you have a trigger from your past that pulls the rug up from under your feet every time it shows up?

Mine is a specific sound. The buzz and hum of an automatic garage.

In my current home, I always resist for a second before I hit the button from inside the garage to open it. When I recently slept in my sister’s guest room, situated above her garage, I held my breath at the sound of my nephew opening it coming home from a football game. At my in-laws, I freeze each time I hear the door close, the robotic whirr before the bottom edge hits the ground.

It’s been 30 years and I still associate garages with a pivotal time from my childhood.

Up until I was 10, I was the baby of the family, the youngest of three girls. My oldest sister, 10 years older than me, left first to go to college. Then, two years later when my middle sister left, in an instant, I became an only child.

When my sisters moved out, I was sobered by two realities. The first one, a more trivial annoyance, was that I had to do more chores by myself. We could no longer rotate laundry, dishes and sweeping duties. But pulling a bulky vacuum up and down the stairs was no competition to my second reality — the massive weight of the idea that I was alone.

When they left, my lifeline left. My sisters were my soft cushion to a sharp edged and complicated home life.

Our parents had a messy marriage, often displayed to us through explosive arguments. We had a dad who was always angry, a symptom likely from his own difficult childhood and 4 years fighting a war the world disagreed with. We also had parents who didn’t understand an ounce of what it’s like to grow up American, and we had no clue how hard it was to raise kids as immigrants. This combination only left us full of misunderstanding — and a generational divide as vast and wide as a 3-car garage.

When my sisters left, I had to deal with this by myself.

Stir all that up with me going through puberty and we had the perfect recipe for a confused soon-to-be-teenage girl who would make many bad decisions.

In the meantime, during their college years, my sisters came home every few weeks on the weekends. When they came back, I cherished my time with them and tried my hardest to not be their irritating little sister.

They were my warm stew on a cold night. I was hungry for their comfort. I wanted them nearby to feel a semblance of safety, to be around the only two people in the world who could understand our living situation.

They were my second mothers before they moved out, forced to babysit me because our parents worked full time.

They were also everything I wanted to be. They were my heroes. I wanted to be just like them, act like them, look like them, dress like them, be cool like them.

They were also two adults who needed to leave.

By Sunday afternoon, it was time for them to go. In my mind, preparing for them to leave was a long and drawn out process. Maybe this is why I hate long goodbyes today.

Sometimes we’d wash my sister’s blue Honda Civic with the bad tint job in the rear window, riddled with bubbles. I dragged my feet as I loaded their bags into the trunk, just to keep them home a little longer. My mom always made my sisters baon (the Filipino version of a to-go box) and we’d find a good spot in the car so the food won’t spill on their journey. And then, like clockwork, my parents reminded them to not eat out, “always save your money.”

And then we’d say our goodbyes.

I watched my sisters reverse out of the driveway, pull their car forward and turn around at our cul-de-sac. I stood at the doorway between the house and the garage, and stared as they drove up the hill and out of my sight.

For 8 more years, I watched my sisters leave from our garage while I stayed back.

I yearned for my sisters to visit more often but, the reality was, they never came back as much as I wanted them to. I never blamed them, I knew how hard it was be home. I wanted them like a yo-yo, to come back around quickly — but they needed to let the string drag. It was only natural for them to stay away longer from the nest and build their lives as adults while I was years behind, learning how to grow up.

When I could no longer see their tail lights, I pressed the little rectangular white switch to close the garage door. Some days, I stayed at the doorway and waited until the garage fully closed.

Other days, I didn’t care to watch my sisters leave so I ran upstairs before I could hear the garage door close. It didn’t matter where I was in the house though, I could always hear the soft thump of the door hitting concrete. The sound marked my reunion with loneliness.

My sisters left during a formative time in my life and, yes, even now it makes me tear up thinking about it today.

In fact, my sister and I cried about these memories when we talked on the phone this week.

They say tough times give you thick skin. I believe it gave me a protective layer to survive my teenage years… and lots to talk about in my many adult years in therapy :)

The next time I hear the sound of a garage, I will still wince. And that’s ok, the trigger may always live with me. I get to hold those memories of my unique relationship with my sisters, even though difficult.