40. Erin Kenny

Another entry in 50 to 50.....40. Erin Kenny. Aka my oldest sister. Erin is six years older than me, and as a kid, that was as good as a life-time. She was the oldest in the family, and had mostly moved out of the house by the time she was probably 16 or 17, which means I was only 10 or 11 , so I don’t have too many childhood memories of our relationship. There are more than a few snippets I remember well, fleeting memories that would give insight into our later close relationship as adults. The first is from when we lived in the big house on Edgemont road and we shared the third floor. It was me, Tom and Erin, and Erin’s bird, “Eros.” She had the room that had the arched window in it and faced the front of the house, I had the room behind her, that I had asked to be painted bright lime green, with an orange and lime checkered bedspread. One day, I remember playing up the road with our neighbors the Connellys. I don’t know what happened to upset me, but I remember running home from their house, crying, wearing my favorite new orange pleather bomber jacket that I had just gotten from a clothing sale at Mount Hebron middle school. I don’t know why I remember that I was wearing that jacket, but I can see it clearly in my mind. I can also see the street, the huge cherry blossom trees, the park on my left and my house in front of me on the right. I remember running up the stairs of the house, up to my bedroom, and hiding in anger and frustration behind my bed. I would have been about 7 or 8 when we lived in that house, so Erin would have been about 13 or 14. I remember her coming into my room, coming to me behind the bed, coaxing me out and comforting me, telling me I was ok, and whatever had happened to upset me was wrong.That wasn’t the first or only time that Erin came to my defense when I was little (or when I was grown) – and I have several little memories of scenarios like this, both at home in Montclair and at the cottage in Canada. I have another tiny snippet lodged in my mind, I think this one may have been around the same time. Erin was in high-school at Paul the 6th, and had a few friends who came around the house. They were a novelty to me because they were older and beautiful, but they also seemed exotic, because they weren’t from Montclair, as Paul the 6th was in some neighboring town. In this memory, all I remember is sitting in the living room with Erin and her friend, I think her name was Margaret, and them talking about how cute and pretty I was. I’m sure it made such an impression because I was usually considered a nuisance to my older brothers and sisters and their friends, or at least that’s how I felt, but also because these girls were so much of who I wanted to be when I grew up …. to be 16 or 17 years old. And here was Erin, beautiful, tiny with a huge personality and huge platform heels, a girl who seemed to own the world her, telling me that I was important. It lit me up. Erin was always very independent and stubborn, and seemed to already be grown up. She was the original family rebel, and paved the way for a lot of leniency in my future. Where Erin would get into huge fights with my parents – refusing to go to church, or defending her clothing choices, I learned to fly slightly more under the radar and avoid much of that conflict. Older siblings always say the younger ones had it better, and I’m sure in many ways that’s true – we watch and learn, and I watched and learned from Erin a lot. I can picture her walking down our front stairs for her prom, or maybe some dance, hair curled back perfectly a la Farrah, super high wedge heels, cute floral dress, and thinking, I‘m going to be like that some day – pretty, confident and special. Of course, I understood later that many of those attributes I attributed to Erin were more what I wanted them to be and less how she felt on the inside.I don’t remember specifically her moving away to college, first in South Florida, then off to Olympia, but sometime in high school or maybe early college I went out to visit her a couple times with my parents. Her life seemed so cool – she lived in a house with a bunch of cool people, she had gone from platform heels to bare feet and was turning more and more into the crunchy Greener that was always at her core. When in 1990, I decided I wanted a change from the only life I really knew on the east coast, it was Erin who suggested I come out and live in her house for the summer, while she was doing her annual summer care-taking gig at Goldmyer Hot Springs. I wasn’t very close with Erin, but certainly close enough to take her up on that opportunity. She was so grown up (at now 29 years old) and I absolutely loved being folded into her life at the Pyramid Inn, 3828 Interlake Avenue North, an address I will always remember. It was from that house that I first explored Seattle, fireworks at Gasworks Park, happy hours at Beso del Sol, my first trip up to the Comet and meeting – I have no idea why I remember this – Jason Finn as a bartender, wearing a love battery tee-shirt, my first year at Bumbershoot – it was either free or five dollars back then, going to the Eastlake Zoo to watch our sometimes housemate play in an African band, hanging out at Avast recording with Stuart Hallerman, trekking up and back to Goldmyer…. all of my friends in those early years were friends I inherited from Erin, and the inheritance was rich and abundant. We jammed constantly in the basement of that house, made bobolli pizza, watched LA Law, All my Children, and Star Trek- the next generation, religiously as a household. I had never experienced this kind of social community and it did wonders for my sense of self and belonging.I moved out after a year or so, but living so close to each other, of course Erin and I continued to hang out, at one point she even moved into the same apartment complex as me on Capitol Hill. We both loved writing and playing music, dancing at Rebar and going out to see shows. Even when Erin was in law school, she never slowed down with her passions for music and the outdoors, and in fact, our band, along with Karen Hancock and Grant Cole, played at her law school graduation party.Finally Erin moved out to Vashon Island, and through many iterations, started what would become her ultimate passion and brainchild, Cedarsong Nature School and the Forest Kindergarten. But no matter what Erin was doing, those initial feelings from those earliest memories, remained constant. Erin was always looking out for me and comforting me, and she was always telling me that I was important, that I inspired her and that she would always have my back.I saw this over and over again, from the way she helped me through every major transition and decision in my adult life – through bands, and grad school and break-ups, and losses, Erin always had a new and super clear perspective to offer me. As I worked for and through The Samarya Center, Erin always supported all my work, attended every fundraiser, and as she developed her own hugely successful program, always called me her inspiration and never seemed competitive about any of our common goals or accomplishments. In fact, Erin was and always has been the picture of grace in the one goal I could not meet – being a mother. Erin was there every step of the way through my miscarriages, indeed she was the one I called from inside of the bathroom when I was paralyzed by the realization that a miscarriage had occurred. She was the one who talked me through, right there in the bathroom, finding and lighting a candle, and creating a tiny ritual to mark this loss, even as Sasha’s 40th birthday party raged on just outside the door. And she was the one, who gave me such unrestrained access to her son Shanikai, not only allowing him to spend so much time with me and Sasha, sleeping at our house when he was only four or five years old, but also talking to me about mothering, asking for my opinion and insight, treating me like I would know about parenting, and always being present and open to the various ups and downs of the full impact of that loss, those losses, to this day.The hardest thing about moving away from Seattle was leaving Erin and Shanikai for sure. Especially given that within two weeks of them helping us pack up to move away – Erin offering her particular expertise in extreme organization and ability to purge useless crap, as long as it wasn’t her own – she was diagnosed with stage 3 cancer. But even that Erin was able to handle with the same kind of singular focus and trust that she had approached every other thing in her life. I watched her go through the most horrific chemo treatments, lose all her hair, and face the possibility of death with that same indomitable spirit she had when she refused to go to church all those years before. Only now, like with so many things, that same value was expressed completely differently. Erin got up every day, put on her boots and warm weather coat and trekked around in the mud with her tiny students, she saw her cancer as an opportunity and took every moment to see how she could be transformed by the experience.Erin’s spirit, her love, her desire and ability to change, her capacity for forgiveness and renewal, her willingness to look at herself courageously and constantly ask herself, “is this who I want to be,” her unwavering support and continued “big sister” role to me has influenced me, strengthened me, and taught me in immeasurable ways. Birth order is a funny thing, and I am glad where we each fell in relationship to each other. I know it was getting to be Erin’s little sister that allowed me to be her friend in the specific way I am now. I couldn’t have asked for a better model and a better entrée into the first part of my adult life. Can’t wait to see how the next part unfolds, with my sister by my side and in my heart.