A truce twenty-six years in the making
If the stinging slap she delivered to my mother upon my birth* is any indication, my sister really, really liked being an only child. Either that, or she really, really didn't like me in particular. From my position it really didn't matter which was true, as the resulting abject sibling hatred was the same in either scenario.
Our first meeting clearly did not go well, despite my mother's efforts to prepare my sister for that fateful day. My mother says she gave my sister a doll, and the idea was that caring for babies was something my sister and mother could do together, like, "Here, you take care of your plastic baby and I'll take care of this real baby, and we can work side by side and spend lots of time together making sure our babies have everything they need." I think this was supposed to convince my sister that we were all in this together and that it would be fun. Unfortunately my sister isn't really that stupid.
So instead I can imagine that whatever cute little baby doll my mother gave her became not a symbol of sisterly love, as my mother may have hoped, but a rudimentary introduction to voodoo. I was too little to remember, but if my sister's feelings for me at the time are any indication, she was holding that thing underwater and chanting in tongues while wishing fervently for my prompt demise so she could once again have all the parental love to herself. She was precocious that way.
It didn't help that my sister and I were (and still are) so very different. My sister liked to count things, add them up, witness the mechanics of reality in motion. She could read at three and was probably arranging her own sock drawer by three and a half. Had computerized spreadsheets been readily available back in 1981, she would have eagerly used one to sort her stuffed animals by size, color, and texture (Smooth gets a value of 0, Mildly Fluffy gets a value of 3, and Wispy Angora gets the maximum value of 10).
And if she were indeed into baby-doll voodoo, I have no doubt her instruments of doll torture were always sterilized and organized neatly on a surgical tray. If I know her at all, the shank she shoved into the left eye socket of my plastic effigy was carefully sharpened to a deadly point, with routine sharpening maintenance on alternate Tuesdays.
While my sister was counting things and reading and impressing the heck out of everyone in general, I was wading in my own pile of unwashed laundry and trying to build parachutes out of garbage bags, which I would then hold over my head as I leaped ceremoniously off the highest point of our house that I could climb to. Unfortunately my handmade parachutes never slowed my descent, so all I got was sore ankles while my sister racked up a perfect grade-point average. I also attempted to dig several holes to China using only a fruit spoon (which is all my mother would let me dig with) while my sister did productive things like earn an allowance and find ways to rebuild the ozone layer.
That's right. I was the quirky kid. The one people write novels about. The one with the uncrushable spirit and vivid imagination. In literary works, that type of kid is inspiring and cute. (I was Ramona, for God's sake. Who doesn't like Ramona?) In reality that type of personality can be really annoying. As my entire family could probably attest.
In fact, kid's books are packed full of lies. I don't remember anyone being all that into Beezus, but everyone seemed impressed with my sister. Her intellect and obedience were so out-of-this-world that my parents weren't quite sure what to do with me. When one child is busy carefully sweeping the porch and the other child is busy smashing her fingers into her closed eyelids because it makes funny colors,** that tends to give parents pause.
My parents looked from one child to the other and determined that I was "dumb as a box of rocks," as my mother still phrases it to this very day. They consoled themselves with the notion that one smart child was enough for any family. And it isn't as if they gave up hope for me. They made sure I got plenty of fresh air as I ran around outside, so that my spirit and body would be fed and encouraged, so that I could bask in the wholesomeness of nature and perhaps find my own unintellectual path to happiness ... or at least build up my muscles enough to turn a pretty penny as a unskilled laborer in the shoe factory.
But lo! I went to kindergarten and underwent many tests, and it turned out that I was smart too! In a fanciful, useless way, versus the productive and profitable accountant sort of way! No one was more surprised than my parents when it was discovered that I almost always knew the right answer when it was requested of me--I just never raised my hand, because hand-raising is boring and was clearly designed by The Man. (My sister, on the other hand, probably raised her hand every time she knew the answer, because that is what you are supposed to do. Suck-up.) I never offered the answer voluntarily, because why bother if no one is even going to pay you or anything.
But as soon as someone got a clue and gave me a magic pen that rewarded me with pretty music when I tapped it on the right answer in a book,*** it was discovered that I was practically a genius. A really, really lazy genius.
If anything, this discovery only heightened the tension between me and my sister. Suddenly everything was a competition. But we were so different that each of us frequently lost in humiliating defeats/won in landslide victories, depending on the competition category in question. I could draw and she could not. She could add and I could not. We didn't allow the obvious fact that we were apples and oranges slow us down any when it came to gleefully shoving our achievements in the other sister's face.
Our rough start combined with our personality differences translated into about sixteen years of household strife. There were other factors, too, especially later on; as the responsible one, she often tried to parent me, asking whether I had done my homework and so on. Our mother was sick, and I'm sure she was just trying to help, but the high-school version of me, who was as fiercely independent and bull-headed as I am today, resented it with teeth-gritting ingratitude. I didn't care about her life and was baffled as to why she would bother to care about mine. All I wanted was to be left alone. In fact I was self-absorbed and oblivious (two things I will probably always be, despite my best efforts--it comes with living inside one's own imagination and also having what is, in all likelihood, unmedicated ADD), and for every instance of inappropriate parenting my sister committed, I'm sure I committed an instance of utter failure to be there for my struggling family, to help with small chores and tasks or to realize that I was needed in some way. I couldn't stand my sister's prissy, holier-than-thou meddling; she couldn't stand my shrugging, selfish lack of contribution. Simply put, we were a mess.
I tortured her whenever possible and she returned the favor, and ... I hated her. Really hated her. I could tell you stories that would make my hate for her sound amusing, but if I'm going to be very honest with you, it wasn't amusing at all. It was sick and unhealthy. I used to wish fervently that she would run away, move away, be kidnapped, anything, just so I would never have to hear her voice again, just so she would never again get into my business or nag me about studying or whatever she felt like mothering me about that day. I used to tremble with how much I hated her. The day I found out she wasn't going away to college, but rather had chosen to stay home and attend school locally ... I think that was the most angry with anyone I have ever been, even to this day. I couldn't believe she would choose to continue living with me. I couldn't believe she had thrown away a golden opportunity to rescue both of us from what we did to each other.
After that, there was no question that I was going away to school. As I saw it, she hadn't left me with much of a choice. The day I left, I was a nervous wreck, but still somehow found time to say really offensive and selfish things, like how happy I was to finally be around a bunch of normal people rather than a family who seemed to spend most of their time in a hospital. Once I had made sure everyone's feelings were good and hurt, I headed off to school and thought only about myself and my own strife for about four years.
And then, really slowly ... I don't know. I grew up some and lost a bit of the vain selfishness, she grew up some and lost a bit of the goal-oriented neuroticism, my mother's health improved, and somehow the tension eased. Then my sister had a baby, and we all loved the baby, and that made things better too. And I saw things her way sometimes, or at least I tried to, and I think she extended me the same courtesy a little more often. I still don't understand how failing to get a 4.0 GPA every semester qualifies as some sort of tragedy, and she still doesn't understand how I can sleep at night with the knowledge that I have never, not even for the first week, balanced my checkbook, but I think we've agreed to disagree, at least on some things.
And over time, I've started to realize that she isn't the only difficult one in the family ... that we're all difficult in our own way. That's been one of the hardest things about growing up: facing my own enormous flaws and understanding how extensively they contributed to the family strife that I once blamed entirely on my sister. (She still sucked worse than me, of course. Naturally.)
HIGHLY DRAMATIZED EXAMPLE CONVERSATION ONE:
MY SISTER IS VERY DIFFICULT
Schnozz: I'm thinking of moving to New York!
Schnozz's sister: New York? Really?
S: Yup!
SS: But ... isn't it really expensive to live there?
S: Yeah, I guess ... but so many people do it that obviously there's a way. I'll work it out.
SS: I hear it's really violent too.
S: There's a lot of crime there, sure, but there are a lot of people there too, and I'll be careful. Try being happy for me for once! You can't base your decisions on the fear that someone will rape and kill you.
SS: Yes you can! Why, just the other day I decided I'd better not leave the house because I heard on the radio that some killer was on the loose a mere three hundred miles from here. Besides, three of the five weather forecasts I check every day called for rain.
S: Uh. Right. Anyway, New York! I'm excited.
SS: I don't see why you're excited about being raped and killed.
S: What?? Shut up. It's an adventure!
SS: Yeah, if you consider being garroted in a deserted subway station and then thrown on the electrified rails and left for dead an adventure.
S: Ohhhhh-kay. I'm leaving now, for New York, to have an exciting, fulfilling life. You just stay here, where it's safe.
SS: I will. I have no interest in moving to a dirty city full of homeless people just waiting to slice your throat open for a dollar, but that's just me. Enjoy New York. I'll miss you when you're dead.
HIGHLY DRAMATIZED EXAMPLE CONVERSATION TWO:
I AM VERY DIFFICULT
SS: We really need to talk about something.
S: Okay! Hey, look, I can make a face that makes me sort of look like a turtle.
SS: I'm being serious. Can't you be serious for once?
S: Fine, fine. You're serious, I'm serious, we're all very serious. We're serious lawyer types. We're so serious that we don't even laugh when someone farts really loud in church. Because it's not funny. Church is not funny. Nor is farting. Farting is merely digestive gases escaping from the body via the anus and we don't find that funny at all. That's how serious we are. Here, look, I'll make a serious face. Well, a serious turtle face, anyway.
SS: You're impossible.
S: All right, all right. I'm listening. What's up?
SS: Well, it's about Grandma. Her bills have been really high lately, but you know she's going to insist on giving us a really good Christmas anyway, even if it means she'll be homeless by New Year's. So I think we should sit down with her and explain to her that we love her whether she gets us presents or not--
S: Speaking of Christmas, my mashed potatoes are sort of in the shape of a Christmas tree. Aren't they? Look! It's a mashed-potato tree! With garlands of cheese and garlic! I wish real garlands were made of cheese and garlic.
SS: OH MY GOD. Are you even listening to me? Don't you even care about your own impoverished grandma?
S: What Grandma needs is a drink or two. Let's take her out tonight. Can you imagine that, Grandma wasted? That would be hilarious. She would be all drunk and dancing on the bar, like, "Don't you wish your Grandma was a hot like me ... don't you wish your Grandma was a freak like me ... Doncha?"
SS: Um, I'll just ... take care of this myself. Bye.
S (to self): Doncha? Haaaaah-aah? Doncha?
(time passes while Schnozz stares into space with a half-smile on her face)
S (again, to self): I suppose the question is whether, in a bar striptease, one would remove one's teeth as part of the act, if one could.
We all have our flaws, as you can see.
The point is, my sister just came to visit me in St. Louis for a few days. And despite my lack of planning and inability to get ready on time, much less be aware of my guests' obvious needs, and despite her highway-induced anxiety and continual preoccupation with whether her travel budget was being followed appropriately, we managed to get along and even have a pretty good time. I'd say that's quite an accomplishment.
I enjoyed your visit, sis. We may never share a sitcom-worthy cheesy sisterhood, but I'm glad we no longer actively try to kill each other. Sure, I still will never, ever have kids close in age just in case they turn out like us, and sure, I will actively beg other mothers to refrain from having kids close together as well ... but if I ever do move to New York, I still hope you'll visit before I'm inevitably murdered in an alley.
And ... make sure you take care of that Grandma thing, OK?****
---------
*Yes, really.
**A favorite hobby of mine for years. It kind of hurts after a while, but the longer you do it, the more interesting and rapid the color splotches get. I used to do it almost every night to entertain myself after bedtime. This probably wasn't good for me, but back then it seemed like a perfectly reasonable way to pass the time.
***I only missed one question in that entire book. And it was a BS question about which was "bigger," a 2 or 3. I examined them carefully and determined that while the 3 obviously signified a larger amount, the 2 was technically "bigger," as in, its ink took up more square footage on the page. So I answered "2" and the tester was appropriately startled at my sudden lapse in intelligence. More important, no pretty music came out of the pen. I'm still pissed.
****I will totally take care of the next thing to pay you back. Unless I'm like, super busy or don't really feel like it.
Our first meeting clearly did not go well, despite my mother's efforts to prepare my sister for that fateful day. My mother says she gave my sister a doll, and the idea was that caring for babies was something my sister and mother could do together, like, "Here, you take care of your plastic baby and I'll take care of this real baby, and we can work side by side and spend lots of time together making sure our babies have everything they need." I think this was supposed to convince my sister that we were all in this together and that it would be fun. Unfortunately my sister isn't really that stupid.
So instead I can imagine that whatever cute little baby doll my mother gave her became not a symbol of sisterly love, as my mother may have hoped, but a rudimentary introduction to voodoo. I was too little to remember, but if my sister's feelings for me at the time are any indication, she was holding that thing underwater and chanting in tongues while wishing fervently for my prompt demise so she could once again have all the parental love to herself. She was precocious that way.
It didn't help that my sister and I were (and still are) so very different. My sister liked to count things, add them up, witness the mechanics of reality in motion. She could read at three and was probably arranging her own sock drawer by three and a half. Had computerized spreadsheets been readily available back in 1981, she would have eagerly used one to sort her stuffed animals by size, color, and texture (Smooth gets a value of 0, Mildly Fluffy gets a value of 3, and Wispy Angora gets the maximum value of 10).
And if she were indeed into baby-doll voodoo, I have no doubt her instruments of doll torture were always sterilized and organized neatly on a surgical tray. If I know her at all, the shank she shoved into the left eye socket of my plastic effigy was carefully sharpened to a deadly point, with routine sharpening maintenance on alternate Tuesdays.
While my sister was counting things and reading and impressing the heck out of everyone in general, I was wading in my own pile of unwashed laundry and trying to build parachutes out of garbage bags, which I would then hold over my head as I leaped ceremoniously off the highest point of our house that I could climb to. Unfortunately my handmade parachutes never slowed my descent, so all I got was sore ankles while my sister racked up a perfect grade-point average. I also attempted to dig several holes to China using only a fruit spoon (which is all my mother would let me dig with) while my sister did productive things like earn an allowance and find ways to rebuild the ozone layer.
That's right. I was the quirky kid. The one people write novels about. The one with the uncrushable spirit and vivid imagination. In literary works, that type of kid is inspiring and cute. (I was Ramona, for God's sake. Who doesn't like Ramona?) In reality that type of personality can be really annoying. As my entire family could probably attest.
In fact, kid's books are packed full of lies. I don't remember anyone being all that into Beezus, but everyone seemed impressed with my sister. Her intellect and obedience were so out-of-this-world that my parents weren't quite sure what to do with me. When one child is busy carefully sweeping the porch and the other child is busy smashing her fingers into her closed eyelids because it makes funny colors,** that tends to give parents pause.
My parents looked from one child to the other and determined that I was "dumb as a box of rocks," as my mother still phrases it to this very day. They consoled themselves with the notion that one smart child was enough for any family. And it isn't as if they gave up hope for me. They made sure I got plenty of fresh air as I ran around outside, so that my spirit and body would be fed and encouraged, so that I could bask in the wholesomeness of nature and perhaps find my own unintellectual path to happiness ... or at least build up my muscles enough to turn a pretty penny as a unskilled laborer in the shoe factory.
But lo! I went to kindergarten and underwent many tests, and it turned out that I was smart too! In a fanciful, useless way, versus the productive and profitable accountant sort of way! No one was more surprised than my parents when it was discovered that I almost always knew the right answer when it was requested of me--I just never raised my hand, because hand-raising is boring and was clearly designed by The Man. (My sister, on the other hand, probably raised her hand every time she knew the answer, because that is what you are supposed to do. Suck-up.) I never offered the answer voluntarily, because why bother if no one is even going to pay you or anything.
But as soon as someone got a clue and gave me a magic pen that rewarded me with pretty music when I tapped it on the right answer in a book,*** it was discovered that I was practically a genius. A really, really lazy genius.
If anything, this discovery only heightened the tension between me and my sister. Suddenly everything was a competition. But we were so different that each of us frequently lost in humiliating defeats/won in landslide victories, depending on the competition category in question. I could draw and she could not. She could add and I could not. We didn't allow the obvious fact that we were apples and oranges slow us down any when it came to gleefully shoving our achievements in the other sister's face.
Our rough start combined with our personality differences translated into about sixteen years of household strife. There were other factors, too, especially later on; as the responsible one, she often tried to parent me, asking whether I had done my homework and so on. Our mother was sick, and I'm sure she was just trying to help, but the high-school version of me, who was as fiercely independent and bull-headed as I am today, resented it with teeth-gritting ingratitude. I didn't care about her life and was baffled as to why she would bother to care about mine. All I wanted was to be left alone. In fact I was self-absorbed and oblivious (two things I will probably always be, despite my best efforts--it comes with living inside one's own imagination and also having what is, in all likelihood, unmedicated ADD), and for every instance of inappropriate parenting my sister committed, I'm sure I committed an instance of utter failure to be there for my struggling family, to help with small chores and tasks or to realize that I was needed in some way. I couldn't stand my sister's prissy, holier-than-thou meddling; she couldn't stand my shrugging, selfish lack of contribution. Simply put, we were a mess.
I tortured her whenever possible and she returned the favor, and ... I hated her. Really hated her. I could tell you stories that would make my hate for her sound amusing, but if I'm going to be very honest with you, it wasn't amusing at all. It was sick and unhealthy. I used to wish fervently that she would run away, move away, be kidnapped, anything, just so I would never have to hear her voice again, just so she would never again get into my business or nag me about studying or whatever she felt like mothering me about that day. I used to tremble with how much I hated her. The day I found out she wasn't going away to college, but rather had chosen to stay home and attend school locally ... I think that was the most angry with anyone I have ever been, even to this day. I couldn't believe she would choose to continue living with me. I couldn't believe she had thrown away a golden opportunity to rescue both of us from what we did to each other.
After that, there was no question that I was going away to school. As I saw it, she hadn't left me with much of a choice. The day I left, I was a nervous wreck, but still somehow found time to say really offensive and selfish things, like how happy I was to finally be around a bunch of normal people rather than a family who seemed to spend most of their time in a hospital. Once I had made sure everyone's feelings were good and hurt, I headed off to school and thought only about myself and my own strife for about four years.
And then, really slowly ... I don't know. I grew up some and lost a bit of the vain selfishness, she grew up some and lost a bit of the goal-oriented neuroticism, my mother's health improved, and somehow the tension eased. Then my sister had a baby, and we all loved the baby, and that made things better too. And I saw things her way sometimes, or at least I tried to, and I think she extended me the same courtesy a little more often. I still don't understand how failing to get a 4.0 GPA every semester qualifies as some sort of tragedy, and she still doesn't understand how I can sleep at night with the knowledge that I have never, not even for the first week, balanced my checkbook, but I think we've agreed to disagree, at least on some things.
And over time, I've started to realize that she isn't the only difficult one in the family ... that we're all difficult in our own way. That's been one of the hardest things about growing up: facing my own enormous flaws and understanding how extensively they contributed to the family strife that I once blamed entirely on my sister. (She still sucked worse than me, of course. Naturally.)
HIGHLY DRAMATIZED EXAMPLE CONVERSATION ONE:
MY SISTER IS VERY DIFFICULT
Schnozz: I'm thinking of moving to New York!
Schnozz's sister: New York? Really?
S: Yup!
SS: But ... isn't it really expensive to live there?
S: Yeah, I guess ... but so many people do it that obviously there's a way. I'll work it out.
SS: I hear it's really violent too.
S: There's a lot of crime there, sure, but there are a lot of people there too, and I'll be careful. Try being happy for me for once! You can't base your decisions on the fear that someone will rape and kill you.
SS: Yes you can! Why, just the other day I decided I'd better not leave the house because I heard on the radio that some killer was on the loose a mere three hundred miles from here. Besides, three of the five weather forecasts I check every day called for rain.
S: Uh. Right. Anyway, New York! I'm excited.
SS: I don't see why you're excited about being raped and killed.
S: What?? Shut up. It's an adventure!
SS: Yeah, if you consider being garroted in a deserted subway station and then thrown on the electrified rails and left for dead an adventure.
S: Ohhhhh-kay. I'm leaving now, for New York, to have an exciting, fulfilling life. You just stay here, where it's safe.
SS: I will. I have no interest in moving to a dirty city full of homeless people just waiting to slice your throat open for a dollar, but that's just me. Enjoy New York. I'll miss you when you're dead.
HIGHLY DRAMATIZED EXAMPLE CONVERSATION TWO:
I AM VERY DIFFICULT
SS: We really need to talk about something.
S: Okay! Hey, look, I can make a face that makes me sort of look like a turtle.
SS: I'm being serious. Can't you be serious for once?
S: Fine, fine. You're serious, I'm serious, we're all very serious. We're serious lawyer types. We're so serious that we don't even laugh when someone farts really loud in church. Because it's not funny. Church is not funny. Nor is farting. Farting is merely digestive gases escaping from the body via the anus and we don't find that funny at all. That's how serious we are. Here, look, I'll make a serious face. Well, a serious turtle face, anyway.
SS: You're impossible.
S: All right, all right. I'm listening. What's up?
SS: Well, it's about Grandma. Her bills have been really high lately, but you know she's going to insist on giving us a really good Christmas anyway, even if it means she'll be homeless by New Year's. So I think we should sit down with her and explain to her that we love her whether she gets us presents or not--
S: Speaking of Christmas, my mashed potatoes are sort of in the shape of a Christmas tree. Aren't they? Look! It's a mashed-potato tree! With garlands of cheese and garlic! I wish real garlands were made of cheese and garlic.
SS: OH MY GOD. Are you even listening to me? Don't you even care about your own impoverished grandma?
S: What Grandma needs is a drink or two. Let's take her out tonight. Can you imagine that, Grandma wasted? That would be hilarious. She would be all drunk and dancing on the bar, like, "Don't you wish your Grandma was a hot like me ... don't you wish your Grandma was a freak like me ... Doncha?"
SS: Um, I'll just ... take care of this myself. Bye.
S (to self): Doncha? Haaaaah-aah? Doncha?
(time passes while Schnozz stares into space with a half-smile on her face)
S (again, to self): I suppose the question is whether, in a bar striptease, one would remove one's teeth as part of the act, if one could.
We all have our flaws, as you can see.
The point is, my sister just came to visit me in St. Louis for a few days. And despite my lack of planning and inability to get ready on time, much less be aware of my guests' obvious needs, and despite her highway-induced anxiety and continual preoccupation with whether her travel budget was being followed appropriately, we managed to get along and even have a pretty good time. I'd say that's quite an accomplishment.
I enjoyed your visit, sis. We may never share a sitcom-worthy cheesy sisterhood, but I'm glad we no longer actively try to kill each other. Sure, I still will never, ever have kids close in age just in case they turn out like us, and sure, I will actively beg other mothers to refrain from having kids close together as well ... but if I ever do move to New York, I still hope you'll visit before I'm inevitably murdered in an alley.
And ... make sure you take care of that Grandma thing, OK?****
---------
*Yes, really.
**A favorite hobby of mine for years. It kind of hurts after a while, but the longer you do it, the more interesting and rapid the color splotches get. I used to do it almost every night to entertain myself after bedtime. This probably wasn't good for me, but back then it seemed like a perfectly reasonable way to pass the time.
***I only missed one question in that entire book. And it was a BS question about which was "bigger," a 2 or 3. I examined them carefully and determined that while the 3 obviously signified a larger amount, the 2 was technically "bigger," as in, its ink took up more square footage on the page. So I answered "2" and the tester was appropriately startled at my sudden lapse in intelligence. More important, no pretty music came out of the pen. I'm still pissed.
****I will totally take care of the next thing to pay you back. Unless I'm like, super busy or don't really feel like it.
posted by Schnozz at 8:07 PM
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