Inspired by my recent move...
Three's a Charm: A Tribute
I spend a lot of my writing-life creating works of fiction. Probably eighty-five percent of what I produce is fiction and prose that never really goes anywhere but onto a computer. I’m okay with this because it’s a release for me. Because its purpose is for me to deal with my every day life. If you’ve ever met me, you’d know that I’m stubbornly unemotional. I have emotions. After all, I’m not made of wood. I simply choose not to let my demeanor reflect what they are most of the time. I digest my world by writing about it. As I’m sure you’re aware (since you’re reading this), I spend the other fifteen percent of my writing-life doing columns of one kind or another. Advice. Opinion. What have you. And again, in these situations, I use the medium to examine and call into question aspects of humanity that anger or amuse me. Or I use it to express amazement at every day life. At least, I hope this is what I’m doing.
I noticed something about myself as a writer that I don’t like very much. I just finished going through every column and nearly every work of fiction that I’ve produced in the past few years and it seems as though I do my best and most poignant work when I’m angry, afraid or sad. I thought about why that might be and the part of me that wants to justify things to myself did exactly that by thinking that when life is really, really great, it’s easier to digest. Then another part of my brain started to question my justification. Any artistic expression is in essence a tribute to something, isn’t it? A painter makes a painting and it is a visual tribute to the subject of the painting. Likewise, a writer writes and it is a written tribute to the subject of the writing, isn’t it? And along those lines of logic, I have to stop and ask myself why I so often pay tribute to my own anger and sadness and so infrequently to my happiness? Is that messed up or what? I’ve decided that in this column and in a rare-ish outpouring of emotion, I’m going to tell you my favorite story about my favorite moment so far.
I peaked as a four-year-old. This is something I tell people all the time and it makes me sound very self deprecating. Until, of course, I tell the story about why. Picture it. Strongsville, Ohio 1987. I’ve spent a four-year-old’s eternity begging for siblings and then finally, one day, my parents sit me down and tell me that I’m about to be somebody’s big sister. And then I spend what seems like another eternity watching my mother’s belly grow, talking to it, reading it Dr. Seuss books and telling it about my day. Imagine my unabashed toddler enthusiasm when I find out that she’s not just going to give me one sibling, but two!
After this, there is a lot more waiting. The babies are getting really big and my poor mom is barely able to move any more. The babies are using her ribcage as a jungle gym. They move around and her body moves with them. I tell them every day that I love them and I can’t wait for them to meet me. I tell them that I’m going to protect them and teach them everything I can and play with them. And then finally, the time comes.
I am at home with a house full of relatives, waiting for my parents to come home and waiting for the babies. I already know that she had them and they exist in the world and that she and they are okay. I’m told that I have two sisters and I’m in love before I even meet them.
So imagine my absolute horror when my mom and dad and brand new, tiny, perfect, beautiful sisters arrive and no one will let me near them! My mother sits in an arm chair with one baby in each arm and a roomful of aunts and a couple of grandmothers are oohing and ahhing over the new babies. I can barely see them and I start to cry. People assume that I’m jealous of all of the attention they are getting and they pat my head. They brush me aside and hand me toys to try to distract me but this only makes me furious. My mom sees me crying and she tells me to sit down on the love seat. She puts one pillow in each of my arms and says to one of my aunts, “Give her those babies, please.”
The room erupts into protest. “She’ll hurt them!” “What if she drops them!” “Are you insane??” My mom, without raising her voice a single decibel, but this time through slightly gritted teeth (she’s famous for making her point this way) says again, “I want you to give her those babies. Now, please.” If you’ve met my mother, you know it’s a dicey sort of game to argue with her. Especially if she’s asking you a second time to do something that she has already asked you to do, only this time through slightly gritted teeth. And especially when she has just had twins.
So my aunt did what my mother asked her to do. She put one baby in my right arm and one in my left and my four year old self, with legs dangling over the side of the loveseat, met her two best friends. “These are your sisters, Amanda,” my mom said to me. I looked at them, awestruck. Totally relieved and completely happy. One looked up at me like I was some strange bug and the other drooled profusely, eyes wide as little moons. And even at four-years-old I knew that not everyone had something like this. Not everyone gets to have even one best friend, let alone two. And certainly not everyone gets to have two, phenomenal sisters who love them and who they love.
We’re all in our twenties now. One is about to finish law school and baffles me with her ability to navigate the world with grace and ease. The other designs gorgeous flower arrangements, has a degree in biochemistry and is fantastic at taking even the worst situations and making them not only okay, but also hilarious and fun. A day does not go by in which we do not make each other laugh, or support each other’s endeavors or call each other out on our ridiculousness. And at twenty-eight, I know that not everyone gets to have this. I don’t just feel lucky because it goes beyond luck. I feel charmed. Like some magical force in the universe coordinated our being born into the same family. People laugh at me because they don’t get along with their siblings. They think I’m nuts. I say there are worse reasons to be called nuts.
So now you all know something that makes me happy. Not to mention, you’ve read a very unlike-me outpouring of emotion. Let it never be said, readers, that I forgot to pay tribute to my happiness.
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