shelley

today is my sister shelley's birthday. much of her life has been a blur to me. in fact, much of my own life has been a blur. there are things i don't remember about my childhood, about her childhood, that i probably should just as there are things about last week my brain has already confused with other things. but i remember the first time i held her. she was tiny and i wasn't all that much bigger, just two and a half more years on the planet. when our parents brought her home they said she was mine. my very own. i had been hoping for a dog but she was easier to carry so i sat in a big chair and held her. mine mine mine. later, when i still wanted a dog, i convinced her to crawl around after me and bark. i was the princess. it was a very good life.

i remember our mom dressing us in matching garanimals outfits. i have no idea why but it lasted an entire summer- striped tank tops with solid shorts, the kind with vertical seams down the front. we certainly weren't twins but had matching blue dresses and matching raggedy ann jumpers. we shared a room for a while and had bunk beds. i know we listened to a 45 of chantilly lace on a portable turntable over and over while arguing about lite brite pegs. for reasons i can't explain, i'm sure the back side of the 45 was purple people eater. this was when i tried to convince her that the devil lived in our closet. i learned later he lives in a pine barren in jersey but at the time our closet seemed more likely.

we played with lincoln logs, ring-a-ma-jigs, toads, shovels, caterpillars, poker chips, turtles, animal bones, magnifying glasses. we rode bikes everywhere and participated in a variety of shoddy clubhouse building ventures. we spent a good deal of time on a construction site in our neighborhood one year, a house with a floorplan identical to ours but without bothersome things like doors and windows to keep us out. we spent summers at the pool alternately baking and pruning ourselves and trudged home with red-rimmed eyes and chlorine-scented hair when we had to, when we remembered we had a family and there might be dinner for us.

but my sister had a love that made all those other things seem pale and ugly. she loved hot wheels. because we lived on a dead end street, our parents let her play in the gravel road in front of our house where she could spend hours paving roads for her beloved cars. only three houses existed past our own and when dinnertime would roll around, shelley would start to get wary. she'd look for dads coming home and more than once she'd fling herself down in the road, spread little child arms and legs as far to every edge as she could make her small self go, and bellow, "GO AROUND!" to the few grown men coming home who needed to pass. like some sort of bridge troll gone mad, she's stay there staring them down and they'd do what she said. they'd drive off the road a little, into the grass on the side, and maneuver around her oblivious cars on their own important adventures.

i do not know where she learned her fierceness, although spending the first few years of her life as a dog might have contributed. i do know that i learned very early on to do what the men in our neighborhood did. i do as i'm told when shelley is the teller. after that early and brief reign as the princess, i have settled into my life as the dog. it is a very good life, one i would not trade for any other.