Emily Articulated: International Women’s Day

By Emily Erickson
Reader Columnist

I asked for the purple school bus instead of the yellow one with a busted tire. My older sister, keeper of the matchbox cars and head of distribution, plucked it from its plastic parking space container. 

“This one?” she asked, mischievousness glinting in her eye. 

“Yes!” I squealed in reply. 

Weighing it in her hand, dragging the seconds out like a carnival worker waiting for payment at the game counter, she said, “Sure. That’ll be three Pogs… and the green Jeep.” 

I gasped.

Emily Erickson. Courtesy photo.

Gwen, our neighbor and my sister’s best friend, squared her shoulders, leaning so she was more in front of me than beside me, and looked my older sister in the face. 

“You know you can’t ask that. It’s her favorite,” she said.

My stomach clenched at the sacrifice. My sister, more astonished than relenting, settled on a trade of five Pogs and two sprinted laps around the house. 

Ten years later, I forced back my morning’s toast as it threatened to gurgle its way out of my stomach. I couldn’t puke, not standing next to my teammates and all the girls I’d be racing against while we queued in a Port-a-Potty line.

The announcer boomed overhead: “Welcome to the 2009 Wisconsin State High School Cross Country Invitational!”  

“Shit, shit, shit,” I muttered, jumping from one foot to the other, willing myself to make it to the stall.

Slamming the door behind me, I turned the lock and flipped the lid of the toilet closed, the stall’s tight walls blocking out the world around me. I fumbled out a text to my sister through trembling fingers. “I can’t do this.” 

Her reply was instant. “Yes, you can. Trust yourself. You’ve already done so much to get here. And remember, you’ll be OK, whether you take last or win the whole damn thing.”

My breathing slowed, nerves transforming from panic to heady anticipation, and I opened the door to the dazzling sun.

Eight years later, I gripped the steering wheel of my car, wiping tears from my cheeks as I flipped on my blinker. I knew Sara’s exit almost as instinctually as my own. The road narrowed as I approached her neighborhood and rain began to spatter across my windshield. It felt like a fucking cliche. Of course it’d start raining on the night I broke up with my boyfriend, putting our dog, our house and the life we had begun to build in my rearview mirror.

As I walked up the stairs to Sara’s apartment, I saw that she was already standing at her door, waiting to pull me into a silent hug. She held me so long my knees hurt, wracked from the emotion I was exorcizing.

When we finally stumbled inside, the couch was already made up with a pillow and blanket. Sara placed a glass of water on the end table and flipped off the light, whispering, “We’ll make a plan tomorrow.”

And I drifted off to sleep.

Six years later, I removed the tea bag from my mug, watching the errant drops expand like inkblots across my napkin. My thoughts whizzed and whirred in contrast to the liquid’s slow saturation, making a mockery of the soothing spirals of steam heating my face.

My dad’s condition had worsened, making my care to-do list explode like one of those fireworks — each streak of sparks exploding into four additional streaks, all crackling in jest at the lone set of eyes struggling to track a predictable path.

“What is the first step you can think of?” Jamie asked, intuiting the frenzy simmering below my surface. 

With an effort disproportionate to the task, I breathed, “Maybe finding someone to check in on him, so I can know how he’s doing?” 

Clicking her pen, she wrote, “Think of Step 1,” and crossed it off with a flourish. 

“You’re doing great, Em,” she replied. 

And, somehow, it was exactly what I needed to hear.

Women have been showing up for me like this my whole life. They’ve done it in large, transformative ways, but also in the millions of small ways that add up to a near wholly supported existence. I’ve found community in the simple gestures; in messages like, “Hey, I haven’t heard from you in a while,” and, “This made me think of you”; and have been saved by un-repayable gestures like, “You’re not in this alone,” and, “How can I help?”

In thinking about International Women’s Day on the smallest scale possible — my personal experience, comprised of individual moments, shared with women throughout my life — I’m left with the immensity of their impact, an impact that can be multiplied, traced exponentially across time and space until all we’re left with is an unshakeable knowing that we’re where we are because of women. 

And we’ll get where we’re going because of women, too.

Emily Erickson is a writer and business owner with an affinity for black coffee and playing in the mountains. Connect with her online at www.bigbluehat.studio.