a nice day to start again

jenna's hand are smaller than mine. everything about her is small her than me. people always mistake me as the older sister because i am physically larger than her. it isn't hard to be larger than jenna. she is tiny and delicate, and i would say she eats like a bird, but that description seems too prosaic for her eating habits. as my father has said, jenna likes to order food, just not eat it.

a waiter once used that word to describe a cheese plate we were thinking of ordering, prosaic. this upset jenna. i am not sure if it was because it was used to decribe a cheese plate, or because she though the waiter was showing off. it was in a fancy restaurant we were at for my parent's thirthieth wedding anniversary. we did order the cheese plate. i didn't think it was prosaic. it had blue cheese on it that was so strong i couldn't eat it. the restaurant was right next to the ocean, so as we ate cheese and drank cosmopolitans or vodka gimlets or peach on the beaches, we could watch the waves crash on the rocks by the wide windows.

but i am not large by any means. i have to know this and tell myself this as i look in the mirror because a little girl in my kindergarten class asked me if i was pregnant once. i was helping her write a sentence about her family. my moms name is...or my dad likes to...his hair is this color. i know that kids ask silly questions and she didn't mean to hurt my feelings but still i looked in the mirror that night and i sucked in my stomach and tried not to look pregnant, because i wasn't.

jenna is getting married. she wanted something small and quiet. modest, that is how she wants it. she wants her wedding to pass like a saturday afternoon football game, like there will be another one on next saturday. my dad wouldn't have it though. you deserve something larger, don't worry about money, he said and wrapped his bottom lip up over his moustache, nodding.

so jenna got a huge wedding with single white chairs for everyone and a white bow on the end of each aisle. i knew that she had never wanted a big wedding, her view on weddings had been expressed to me at bars over too many beers and packs of cigarettes, the cellophane wrappers crinkled up laying next to them. she did it more for my parents, more because we could, because we had enough money, not because it was something she dreamed of since she was a little girl. when my sister and i played barbies when we were young barbie was never getting married; she was putting on a short skirt and going to work at nordstrom's as a sales girl. that is was jenna and i's dream job, working retail at nordstrom's.