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Archive for the ‘sister’ Category

Installment 4: Meet Me by the Gate

Posted in art, family, Fiction, health, Personal, sister, Writing, tagged on February 18, 2016| 29 Comments »


April 27

I went in for a biopsy today. Allie was going to go with me to the hospital until something came up with Ladies Guild. Something seemed to come up pretty frequently, but that was Allie. That was my baby sister.

“I’ll meet you by the gate,” she said, when she called early this morning.

I knew she meant she’d be waiting in my room when they brought me back.

But Charlie was with me. He was there overseeing everything, asking the pertinent questions and taking note of any instructions. In my room, waiting, I had Charlie. As they wheeled me towards a roomful of strangers, panic set in. But by the time I got to the procedure room, I realized I was holding my breath.

I need to remember to breath.

I had heard stories of my Mom, how she joked with the staff and even argued with them. Not me, I couldn’t stop shaking, couldn’t breathe, barely held back tears. I don’t know how she held it all together.

People were around me preparing, talking to each other, and hooking up equipment. I tried not to think about what they were doing.

I forced myself to concentrate on something other than what was about to happen. I tried to think about Allie, when we were kids. How we walked home together. I tried to recount the path. We’d start by the big oak tree by the gate to the playground.

“I’ll meet you at the gate,” we’d call to each other, parting in the morning.

And there she was waiting every afternoon. Well, almost every afternoon, sitting among the big gnarled roots of the tree.

My back started to tremble. I tried to relax the muscles to make it stop, but couldn’t.

You’re panicking just relax.

We’d walk down the side walk, the few blocks to home. We’d talk about our day and homework.

My teeth were chattering. I tried to keep my breathing even. I was shaking all over.

I needed to think about something else. I remembered Allie’s favorite dress. She wore it almost every day in the third grade. I tried to talk her out of it. It was embarrassing having your little sister wear the same dress every day. Mom washed it every evening. She didn’t care, but I did.

I could hear instruments rattling on a metal tray. My cheeks were moist from tears.

The dress, think about the dress, it was a cotton print with strawberries and a red collar. Grandma made it for her.

Someone slipped a plastic tube in my mouth.

And what about my brother, Bryan? Why had he abandoned us when we needed him most? How had he gotten so far away? How had I let this go on for so long?

I tried to remember to breathe, tried to relax, tried to stop shaking.

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Installment 2: Meet Me by the Gate

Posted in anxiety, art, Fiction, life, sister, Writing, tagged on February 16, 2016| 25 Comments »


NOTE: I apologize. I don’t think I made this very clear. This is a work of fiction based very loosely on my experience that took place many years ago. I am not currently ill, but am using that as a bases to write this fictional story.

April 7

I was on a mission to get rid of the excess things in my life. Clean up, clear out, and get rid of my extra baggage. I was working on the bathroom. A cabinet full of products I hadn’t used in years – moisturizers, conditioners, makeup, lotions, and scented soaps, odds and ends of medicines, band aids, and gauze.

Leaning against the wall were the shell pictures Charlie had promised to hang. After all these years of being single, when did I become so dependent on a man?  Do I really need a man? Man, no. Hammer, yes.

***

I was wandering through the rows at the hardware store, looking for a hammer. I came upon a rack of seeds. Carrots, lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, squash, and flower seeds. Racks and racks, rows and rows. Beautifully drawn pictures and amazing photographs of huge specimens. I felt a change of plans. I needed to reconnect with my Mother and Grandmother. I find myself missing them more and more lately. I remember those summer days, watching my Grandmother and later my Mother bent over a patch of vegetables, weeding, watering and harvesting. As a child, I wandered barefoot through the rows of lush green plants. I want to feel that carefree peacefulness again.

I loaded my cart with more than thirty packets of seeds; seven varieties of tomatoes, six types of lettuce, two kinds of cucumbers, squash – yellow and green, spinach, beans – string beans, green peas, and lima beans, potato starters, garlic and onion bulbs. My cart was overflowing with bags of soil, containers and gardening tools.

Not to forget the gardening gloves. Grandma always had pink flowers on her gloves. I searched through the racks. Solid colors mostly – green, pink, and yellow. A few lavender flowers in back. But I needed pink. Finally on the bottom of the rack behind a row of red rose print, I found the last pink floral gardening gloves. I added them to my now impossible to maneuver basket.

Once home, I started on my mission. I filled rows and rows of tiny containers with soil and seeds, misting each set as I went. I literally had hundreds of soil filled containers when I finished. Perhaps I had gone a little overboard. It doesn’t really matter. Now I can water and wait. Waiting is how I spend most of my time these days. But this is much better than waiting for test results.

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Necromancer’s Nightmare

Posted in art, comedian, comic, family, humor, Personal, sarcasm, short story, sister, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , on August 6, 2014| 16 Comments »


How about a little fiction?

Inquisitions weren’t unheard of these days. But they were certainly rare enough. I never thought I might be involved in one of them.

How could everything have gone so wrong? Our first mission end not just in failure, but death. I glanced on either side of me and saw the worn tired faces of my team members, my younger sisters. Was it my imagination or did they look broken?

The empty seat of our necromancer, cousin Sarh, caught my eye.

I remembered when my Aunt and Uncle had realized their precious little darling was born to raise the dead. Sarh had barely been four. Her parents were hosting the mid-summers celebration. Everyone had been there. Imagine her parents’ shock when the family cat, dead two weeks came romping through the house. Their golden haired four year old following after. I was only six and still remembered my horror. I was always a little repulsed by her.

Nausea swept over me. How could I have ever been repulsed a girl, my cousin, my family?

“Why did you not call for assistance?” The voice of the inquisitor brought me back.

My hand trembled, my eyes stung. I blinked. I couldn’t cry during the inquisition. I would win their sympathy perhaps, but they would never let me off world again. Let alone lead my team.

“We have no elders. The rest of my family are younger than us, still in school. We couldn’t risk their lives. I wasn’t sure we would even make it.”

The old men magicked our family history. The shimmering outline of the text was in front of them.

“Surely there was someone,” the old man said, as he flipped through the text. “Ah, here.”

I closed my eyes and began silently counting. Trying not to remember the mid-summer’s celebration. My sisters’ and

I were hiding beneath the house.

One, two, three tables on the lawn.

Four, five, six, white table clothes fluttered in the summer breeze.

Seven, eight, nine a flash of light my Grandmother fell her eyes staring at nothing.

Ten, Eleven, Twelve the world stopped for a moment.

Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen. Silence, nothing, it wasn’t real. a

Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. A scream, tables overturning, everyone running.

Nineteen, twenty. My Father lay gasping in front of us.

That was the day that took the rest of our family.

And now Sarh.

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I Sold My Sister Out

Posted in humor, sister, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on December 14, 2011| 222 Comments »


Another true tale of sisterhood. Pull up a chair and put down all food and beverages. The producers of this blog are not liable for any food related injuries or deaths resulting from reading this blog.

It was some time ago, I was living in a two story house. My sisters’ wee little children were upstairs. I had just put on the twenty-four hour cartoon channel.

My sister canceled cable when she had children so cartoons were a big deal in their young lives. The cable company called asking my sister why she had canceled. I’m sure they were expecting some reply like, ‘It’s too expensive’ or maybe ‘I don’t really watch it that much’.

Did my sister say one of these canned replies? Nay, nay, she said, “I canceled cable to get the devil out of my life.”

She was serious, but that answer was actually genius. I use that one and the voices in my head told me to when any telemarketers call.

So, it was a dark winter evening, I had settled the children in front of the TV when my sister came running upstairs.

She pulled me in the restroom and asked, “Are all the kids up here?”

And of course they were.

“Then there’s someone in the kitchen,” she said.

My house had been broken into a few weeks before, so it was not beyond the realm of possibility that someone could have come back. We gathered the children and put them in one bedroom. Then my sister and I went to investigate.

You might wonder, “Why not call the police?”

The only phones were in the kitchen and the master bedroom, both downstairs. We crept down, careful to make no noise. My sister was in front of me. Imagine a tall woman with flowing auburn hair in flannel pajamas and a little short one in back wearing something less than appropriate. That was me.

I was holding tightly to the back of my sister’s pajamas. The kitchen was on the left, my bedroom the right. We got to the bottom of the stairs. The light was on. The refrigerator door was wide open.

I shoved my sister into the kitchen. Her arms were flailing and she was tripping over her feet. I ran for the bedroom, and grabbed a gun and the phone. This was years ago and my sister is still whining about the time I sacrificed her to the burglar. I figured she would distract him and I would be back in time to save her.

And by the way, she left the light on and didn’t shut the refrigerator door. There was no burglar. She always makes me walk in front now.

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Picking the Wings from Fairies

Posted in humor, sister, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on December 4, 2011| 186 Comments »


My sister is mad at me … again.

My niece’s name is the source of several of our conflicts. I told her to pick a name that could not be made fun of, children and aunts can be so cruel. But my sister went with Elizabeth despite my warning.

When she was an infant, Elizabeth thought lizard gizzard the funniest thing ever.

When she was a toddler, I taught her to sing Lizzie Borden. Nothing’s creepier than hearing that sweet toddler voice sing “she gave her mother fifty whacks”.

And now, I received the softest throw for my birthday. It looked like it was made of tiny feathers. My niece asked, “It’s so soft, what’s it made of?”

My sister gave me the evil glare and said, “No.” Like I was a dog or her kid.

Answers ran through my head: the Easter Bunny, the skin of the last unicorn, or the wings of a thousand fairies. There’s the tooth fairy and that was your fairy godmother.

Instead I said, “The petals of the softest, most beautiful flowers in the world. Do you know what they’re called?”

“No.”

“Lizzie, they were named after you.”

Now my sister’s totally ticked. Her daughter won’t respond to Elizabeth any more. Now she’s Lizzie. Next stage, get her to nickname herself “E”, since I’m “D”. On to my niece Georgina.

Auntie’s coming G.

Addendum: I was asked if plucking the wings from fairies hurts them. I’m not sure about that, but it definitely slows them down.

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How my Sister Became a Cannibal or a Different Thanksgiving

Posted in family, humor, sister, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on November 24, 2011| 72 Comments »


I was trying to think of the perfect post for Thanksgiving and me being me, I decided to be thankful for the nut I call my  sister.

My Grandmother wanted to be cremated and have her ashes spread over a field of blue bonnets. So after she was cremated, someone thought it was be a good idea to take handfuls of her and spread her around thinking good thoughts. Midway through I realized how disgusting this was. That was about the time the wind picked up. Grandma blew back in my face and I choked on her.

On our way home, one of my sisters wanted to go through a drive through and pick up a burger.

I said, “I have to go in. I have Grandma all over my hands and steering wheel.”

My sister start to laugh.

I asked, “Hey, you know you have a smudge of Grandma on your teeth.”

As the sun was setting, I was waxing nastalgic. I don’t know how many time I’ve told my sister to keep her mouth shut. She never listens. I wonder if that makes her a cannibal.

P.S. Thanks to Hilary White for this week awesome header.

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