Like clockwork, step by step, I follow my feet to the marble topped island in the kitchen. My sister mirrors my movements and we meet at the middle drawer. Her left hand joins my right like legos, and together we pull gently on the small metal handle. The drawer glides open like a gentle rolling wave and we dive in. Swimming in a sea of saran wrap and tin foil, of brown paper bags and Ziplocs of all sizes, our fingers float toward the stack of innocence: our sippy cup collection.
Light yellow, dark yellow, chipped cyan, chewed purple, see though or solid-- the options seem endless. My sister and I are never too thirsty for just a sip. A sippy cup will always quench our cravings. Ours. Not theirs.
“You girls are too old to use these lids. They’re all too chewed up to save.” Mother tossed the lids in the trash, unknowingly disposing of much more than just mangled plastic. We both wish we had them still, as a subtle reassurance that our drinks could never spill.
When sleepless nights plagued my childhood days I could always depend on chocolate milk, at what felt like midnight, to quell my most troubling worries; like being the only one awake and blinking during naptime or hesitating 3 seconds too many on a mad minute division problem. Even then social pressures and academic standards weighed heavily on my conscience. But Hershey’s syrup was my sedative and the comforting clank of small stainless steel spoons against thick plastic sent soothing shivers down my tiny spine. I would watch, fascinated, as Daddy would move about the kitchen. The cup disappeared into the magic box and when the timer beeped it would reappear, warm chocolate milk in my purple plastic sippy cup. I drank it down like Dramamine and drifted drowsily toward my bedroom where my sister would faithfully step down from her top bunk bed and keep me company, tickling my back until my breath steadied into a rhythmic lull, telling proof that I was fast asleep.
Milk turned into mountain dew as diaries replaced barbies. Racing home from the bus stop, my sister and I would embrace a caffeinated high, “do the dew,” after a dramatic day filled with cliquey girls and cootied boys. We’d sit at the kitchen table and escape into our private limbo, snacking on cereal and sipping from our trusty cups. The carbonation popped like bite-sized balloons on the tips of our tongues and we’d try to hold back the effervescent tears.
And eventually, when car keys replaced diaries so too was soda replaced, or mixed, with jack and gin. And still the cups remain. Until one summer afternoon when my sister and I return to the island the drawer lacks the stack. Mother yells, “Bring the cups down from your rooms!” We were always curious to see if we could collect them all on our desks and nightstands, hallways ledges and bathroom sinks, before she called for them. Never made it that far for fear of Mother’s fury. “You girls live like pigs,” she would yell, but despite her apparent anger she silently washed the cups, time after time, and placed them back into the drawer where my sister and I knew we would always find them, fill them and feel safe.
What a comfort it is to chew a colored cup around the edges, our teeth sunk in so easily. That one was mine, we thought, and proudly, we placed our sippy cups back into the island drawer and sent them rolling back into the only sea my sister and I would willingly sink into.
