On Sisters and Potatoes

It took me a little bit to think of something that made my sister stand out to me or my mother. Everyone knew she was pretty but being pretty isn’t’ anything special, especially when you’re told so all the time. My sister, just like a million other girls, was pretty. In my search to find something that makes her human, makes her an individual I didn’t count her looks into the equation.

It seems important to me to find something about my sister that makes her an individual and not nearly a figment of my imagination. I have a mental image of her but I don’t have many details of her as a person. Who was she inside? I have no clue. I know she was perfect in every mannerism save her desire to disgust me to the point of vomiting. She had a knack for grossing me out and practiced that as often as possible. I always saw it as meanness, almost an extension of other abuses. I’ll spare details but suffice it to say the girl could literally turn my stomach.

When she wasn’t grossing me out she was as I said nearly perfect in all her mannerisms. Dr. D and I talked about how her hair was always done well and how her clothing was just right. I remember the sweaters that hung from her shoulders just like a tennis player. It was tied in the front just so and hung just so. I told him that when she slept it was almost as if she were dead. She never moved. In high school (where we actually had blankets and stuff) she would roll out of bed then pull the covers back into place. You couldn’t tell she’d slept in the bed at all. One simple pull of the covers and viola, the bed was made and perfect again. I’d never seen it before and I’ve not seen it since. She even ate perfectly. She took little tiny bites that were lightly poked with her fork. If I didn’t look just like them I’d seriously wonder if I were adopted.

In an effort to humanize my sister and see her as something other than a robot with few identifying characteristics I set off to travel back to our interactions as children. My mind went blank. I suppose that isn’t anything unusual. When I was younger and attempted to tell my mother what my sister was doing to me my mind would go blank. I couldn’t collect my thoughts or formulate words. It was as if my memory had been robbed and closed up someplace tight. As soon as my mother walked in the door everything I wanted to tell her disappeared. It seems just like then many memories of my sister have simply disappeared.  I wasn’t shocked when my mind went blank, but I was frustrated so I abandoned my journey down memory lane.

Later in the evening I sat on the sofa with the dog curled up next to me. I’d just gotten around to eating a bite. As I brought a fork of fried potatoes to my mouth it hit me, my sister made good fried potatoes. I actually said out loud, “my sister made good fried potatoes.” The reason this is extremely significant is because my mother told her she liked hers over mine. She liked how she cut them uniformly…perfectly. My fried potatoes were sliced but not uniformly. Because my mother liked my sister’s potatoes better she was allowed to make them for her. It seems a small thing but to have one tiny bit of approval from her felt like a huge … gift. To be able to say, I can do something my mother likes was a huge thing. My goodness, we didn’t get to say it often but she could say it about her potatoes. WOW!

Potatoes don’t make her less of an abuser nor does it bring back other memories of her but for some reason remembering that she had a tiny bit of approval from my mother makes me feel good. To remember it feels like a victory, like I got a little tiny piece of life back that I didn’t have before.

Art piece: The art piece shows an older girl sitting on top of a potato in a frying pan. The frying pan is a square, black cast iron skillet with rounded edges. What I noticed about this pieces is that I did not give her facial features. This wasn’t intentional. She’s reserved, protective of herself yet proper with her legs crossed at the ankles. Her hair is down, nearly lifeless as she sits inside the frying pan. There is so little detail in this piece that the lack of details speaks for itself. Colorless clothes, no facial features, no shoes, crossed arms, crossed legs and done in nothing but a steeped tea bag and black ink. I really limited … life. I think that’s the right word, I limited life and breath in this piece which accurately describes my lack of concrete memories about my sister.