How I Ruined My Sister's Life

I've been writing about cake a lot lately.  I've also gained five pounds recently. But, I'm sure there is no correlation between the two. 

Last autumn my siblings and I looked at some old family slides we had found stashed away and forgotten in our mother's Michigan basement. I mention the Michigan part because I'm pretty sure keeping slides in a damp, musty, underground room isn't considered ideal and both age and environment were conspiring to destroy the precious photos that document the history of our fragile and fractured family.

Along with the box of slides, we found an antiquated slide projector that pretty much consisted of a metal box, a small light bulb, and a fan. My brother took the rescued slides and projector home and eventually located an outrageously expensive little light bulb on Amazon.com that would fit the rickety old projector. It is amazing and wonderful that you can find almost anything you want on the Internet if you are tenacious.

Anyway, when we all got together in the West Virginia mountains last fall we arranged furniture to accommodate viewing the photos on a blank wall, settled in with popcorn, and prepared to see what stories were contained in the disintegrating film. We found some photos that made us laugh, some that gave us pause when we considered that everyone in the photo (a mere generation ahead of ours) had died, some that contained mysterious stories, and some that wordlessly captured the mood and emotion of a moment.

This is my sister, Karen, on her fourth birthday.

Clearly she is delighted to be announcing she made it to this big day. She's surrounded by friends at a party solely devoted to celebrating her, and our mother had obviously made quite an effort to decorate a fancy birthday cake. In all, she seems a very happy four year old.

This is my sister, Karen, on her fifth birthday.

No friends. No special party. The cake is prettier (a clear sign our mother had nothing to do with making it), but she obviously had no intention of sharing it. With anyone. This is not a happy five-year old. She may have made it to this momentous day but nothing in her expression says she's celebrating it.

What happened in the span of a year to cause such a change in demeanour?

Me.

The story of my arrival and my sister's response is one of the better known and laughed about stories in our family.  Karen, our brother, Darrell, and I all have December birthdays. Which makes us wonder what was going on with our parents in March. But then we try not to over think that part of the story. Regardless, when my sister turned four she was happily the darling youngest child in the family. Mommie Dearest had her ideal 1950s family; an adorable boy and girl. Life was good. Or at least it could be made to look like it was.

And then came March.

I was born five days before my sister turned five. Her gift that year was an adorable bundle brought home from the hospital on her very birthday. 

She was not amused.

In fact, nobody besides my brother seems very happy about the blessed event.

Damn March.

Karen says she remembers the day quite vividly and the photos tell the truth. She was miserable. She didn't particularly want a baby sister and she wasn't in the least bit interested in sharing the affection of our brother who had always been her buddy and protector. In photo after photo after photo, prior to my arrival, they can be seen together, giggling. In every shot, Darrell has his arm lovingly draped around her. No doubt Mommie Dearest staged this but his genuine affection for her is obvious. But now, she wasn't his only sister.

Today my siblings and I share a sweet bond. Having survived a childhood our mother wanted others to think looked like Leave it to Beaver but actually resembled something more along the lines of Loony Tunes, we share the same funny stories, sad revelations, and bittersweet memories.

My arrival may have rocked the boat and ruined my sister's fifth birthday. She might not have had my brother all to herself anymore. But it turned out okay.

After all, he had two arms.

Confessions of a Mini-Hoarder

I'm afraid I owe my children an apology.

I never thought I'd be in this situation. But I am. Maybe it is because my youngest child is graduating from high school in a few days. Maybe it is my increasing awareness of my own mortality. I'm not sure. Nevertheless, I'm sorry.

A few years ago when my siblings and I moved our mother out of her home of 30 years we spent days sorting through all manner of things she had kept. Many hours during many days going through stuff I doubt she even remembered she had. It was arduous.

(Photo Source: Google Images)

Shortly after that event I vowed that I would never do that to my own children. I came home determined to free myself of the burden of holding on to too much stuff. I even wrote a blog about it.  You can read it here.

I thought I was doing a pretty good job.  I am not, by nature, a keeper. I don't like clutter and I don't find a lot of sentimental attachment to things. I have sentimental memories, but stuff doesn't mean much to me. My husband, on the other hand, might be a teeny bit more of a pack-rat. Let me just say that if I die first, somebody is going to need to keep an eye on him. Seriously. He isn't too bad right now but that is probably because we live in a small house and I gently and oh-so-kindly recommend he get rid of things. Often. But if I'm gone, please, somebody check in on him. If you don't he'll get lost in the house. Not because of piles of old newspapers and dried cat feces but because of floor-to-ceiling towers of art books that will obscure passageways. He'll die one day and they'll remove his partially decayed body from the house and the neighbors will stand around outside and someone will say, "How did he die?" and somebody else will say, "I heard they found him trapped under a pile of nearly empty paint tubes with just one drop left in them."  The coroner will declare cadmium red killed him.

Well, that might be a little dramatic. But still. Check on him.

Anyway, my point here is that I thought I was doing a pretty good job of keeping my home free of extraneous stuff that my children would have to dispose of when I no longer can. But I had failed to give adequate attention to a little beige metal file cabinet that sat in a corner of what has become Steve's art gallery. It was unobtrusive, if out of place, and recently I decided to clean it out so the cabinet could find a new home. I assumed I'd take the things out of the cabinet, put them in the garbage or recycle bin and move on.

I assumed incorrectly.

It had been a long time since I looked in that file cabinet. I didn't even remember what was in it. But as I started to sort through things, I simply couldn't throw them away. Notes from each of my children, scrawled in the hand of those lacking fine motor skills that say, "i LOvE You mOMMy!" Drawings of our family that depict me much thinner than I really was. All manner of things, just too precious to throw away.

At age six, Charles had become obsessed with the Titanic. Obsessed. He was unable to hold a conversation without working in how many rivets had been used on the boat. He wrote poems and drew pictures and even at one point, wrote a letter to Dr. Robert Ballard, the oceanographer who had discovered the sunken ship at the bottom of the sea, inviting him to dinner. I found a copy of the letter. And the one Ballard had graciously written back saying his schedule wouldn't allow him to accept the invitation but thanking Charles anyway.

I found the business plan, letter asking family members to be investors, checkbook, and business cards from Griggs Brothers Ice Cream, the small entrepreneurial start up the boys began to provide a less expensive alternative to the ice cream truck that travelled through our neighborhood selling overpriced confections. For a couple of years Griggs Brothers did quite a good business. How could I toss that stuff?

I found myself unable to discard the bill from the body shop that repaired one of the only new vehicles we ever purchased. It was a blue 1993 Chrysler Plymouth stick shift mini-van. We'd only had it a couple of months when, due to a series of bad decisions on our part, the boys and some neighborhood friends got in it to play and caused it to roll into a bank of community mailboxes taking out the entire back end of the van. At the time it was terrifying. But nobody got hurt and today it makes a funny story. I couldn't throw that bill away.

I found warranties from infant car seats, swing sets, and bike helmets. The items are long gone, but I couldn't part with their manuals. They represent pieces of our younger family.

I stand at a nexus. Excited to see my children launch into their own adult futures but tugged backward to those childhood days. They are moving on. It is what they are supposed to do. Some days I'm ready. Some days I'm not. Sometimes I am eager to see what they do with their lives. Sometimes I just want to hold on a little longer.

But I can't. Life doesn't work that way. I have to let go.

There is a price to pay, though. I'm sorry, some day they will have to sort through the box. They will have to figure out what to do with the only tangible things left from their childhood. Maybe I have to let go of them. But I just can't let go of a note that says:

"i LOvE You mOMMy!"