Sisterhood, Daughterhood, Motherhood

A long time ago, when I was two, something incredible happened: my sister was born. I don’t remember the event or how I felt at the time, but according to my mother, the first thing I said when I saw her was “oh, she’s so beautiful!” On the cusp of having a second baby—who could be a girl and could be a boy—I wonder if our funny, feisty daughter will have a similar reaction or will be horrified by the idea of having to share the previously undivided attention that she got from us.

I can’t remember my life without my sister. In all of my memories from childhood, she is there, a smaller, blond, pouting, pretty little girl who I bossed around and who shared my passions for things like My Little Ponies, Sesame Street and making up dances to the oldies records our parents let us listen to on our Mattel record player. I remember celebrating her first birthday at my preschool and the cookie monster cake she had and how she was a better Easter egg hunter than I was, resulting, inevitably, in tears on my part. I remember being dressed in matching dresses and both of us being unable to contain our excitement about Christmas morning. Together we shared the joy that was going to Dunkin Donuts with our grandmother, picking any donuts we wanted and eating as many as we could. Together we experienced the flu and copious amounts of vomiting post-Dunkin Donuts, which, even though it had nothing to do with the donuts, changed our attitude towards them for many, many years. We played together and we fought with each other. We spent nights giggling in each other’s rooms and jumped from one of her twin beds to the other. We snuck downstairs to watch the Love Boat from behind the couch when our mostly deaf Great-Grandmother was babysitting us. We dressed up in discarded cocktail dresses from our grandmother and grinned at the camera from the bathtub.

I have a wonderful brother, too, who is less emotional and more pragmatic than my sister and I (not to mention more private) and have only one memory of life without him. My sister and I were in a Cleveland daycare and the whole family was temporarily living with our grandparents while waited for our brother’s arrival at the Cleveland Clinic. In the daycare they separated us and were mean to her. She cried and I felt defensive. The next week our parents moved us to a new school.

When he was a baby, I used to carry my brother around and call him my Buddy. I bossed him around as much as I bossed my sister and in our make believe games we called him Jon-Jon. I’m pretty sure I named him and I’m not sure he had a choice in the matter. He probably was a better Easter egg hunter than I was. Mostly I remember us ganging up on him, dressing him up in girl clothes before he was old enough to know better, teasing him about various things. I remember when he pooped in the pool and in the tub as a baby. He was as excited as we were when we all got Cabbage Patch Kids in our Easter baskets one year. Ours was an Easter of consumerism and competitiveness. At some point he went off and did boy things like micro machines and Nintendo. He and my sister were close, but I’m not surprised he didn’t want to hang out with me as much. When I was twenty-three and he was eighteen, he disdainfully informed me that, no offence, but he and his friends didn’t really want to hang around with twenty-three year olds, thus implying that we were a bunch of old farts. Now we are good friends and his 29 years do not seem so different from my 34, with the exception of the fact that I have considerably more grey hair.

In our teen years, when we both had entered the middle school/high school that, at the time, could make or break our teenaged existence, the friendship that I had with my sister deepened in a way that I didn’t experience with my brother because of our age difference. We ate lunch together at school and I felt like it was my duty to look out for her during the day. When I got a serious boyfriend, the three of us spent time together and when my sister and I were both old enough to go out on the weekends, my guy friends were always excited for me to bring my pretty, blonde sister out with me, too. When I got in serious trouble with my parents and she was involved, too, I defended her, boldly lying to keep her out of trouble. She got into plenty of trouble without me, eventually. I remember driving home from New Orleans during a terrible rainstorm after she visited me at my college freshman dorm for the weekend. I complained that a trucker had appraised my legs and honked his horn while she was sleeping. “That’s what you get for wearing such a short ass skirt,” was her response. She’s not one to mince words.

We both ended up in New Orleans for college—she in her freshman year while I was in my senior year—and had a raucous year together, during which she did a lot of chauffeuring me around after bar hopping and parties. One night, when we found ourselves without a car at a house party in a questionable neighborhood in the middle of the night, we curled up on the floor together and spooned to stay warm until it was morning and we could get a ride home with a sober person.

We have been sisters and we have been daughters. Now we are mothers. We live across the ocean from each other, but we still have the sisterhood connection that we’ve always had. We someday hope that we will be in the same city so that our daughters can grow up more like sisters than like cousins. We are again bonded through the mutual experience of loving our children more than we ever imagined we could and the anxiety that comes with that unbelievable love and the responsibility of being parents.

At this point in our lives, we are almost everything to our little girls but someday we know, because we were girls once, too, that the tables will turn. We will be the enemies, the preventers of good times, the cause of hysteria. We will, in our efforts to be the best for them, hurt them in some unknown and unexpected way. They will go away, attempt to become independent, develop their own views, talk to their therapists about how we ruined their lives, pushed them too hard, put too much pressure on them, or not enough. Despite our roles as life destroyers, they will still call us when they are in crisis and we will be the ones they confide in when they are unhappy. We will know that they will come back to us some day, forgive us for our motherly flaws, love us, remember that we were once everything to them. But, in the meantime, during the years that they work it out, grow up and make their way back into our realm, we’ll have each other and our sister bond for comfort and support.

My October Birthday

October is, without a doubt, my favorite month of the year. Not only is it the time of year when it starts to feel crisp and fallish and the leaves start to change, giving off that unmistakable autumn smell, but it’s also the season of hay rides and bonfires and camping and sweaters. Most importantly, it’s my birthday month. Yes, 29 years ago (har har) in October, I was born in Vicksburg, MS, in the breeched position. There was much last minute panicking about my imminent future, but both my mom and I survived the ordeal with a C-Section and life has been pretty good since then.

As a kid, I remember my birthdays being beyond exciting. Waking up in the morning and knowing it was MY SPECIAL DAY, the one day of the year that Idon’t have to share with anyone else (unlike my brother and sister, who both have the same birthday, three years apart), with that fluttering feeling in my stomach, the anticipation of the presents, the cake, the birthday party!!!! In our family, once you are old enough to understand how one can reap the benefits of this arrangement, it is customary to start celebrating your birthday as soon as your birthday month begins and to drag it out for as long as possible. As my birthday falls towards the later part of October, I get to really push the limits of birthday celebrating.

Even though I still like to make a big deal about my birthday, I actually remember very little about my childhood birthday parties. There was, as often as possible, a piñata involved. Once I had a roller skating party, during which one of my classmates broke his wrist. I remember an early birthday party with a cookie monster cake, but I’m not sure if it was my birthday or my sister’s that we were celebrating. I remember coveting purses and shoes that had my name painted on them in 80’s style dot letters and the excitement I felt when I got my first acid washed mini skirt jumper at about age 11. There was always carrot cake or ice cream cake and at some point Mom went through a ‘checker cake’ phase (the cake looked like a checker board). One year my Great Uncle Morris and Aunt Millie were visiting and we had delicious chocolate mousse (Uncle Morris and I had the same birthday, but I was young and he was old, so there was no threat of being upstaged).

As I got older, birthdays were significant for different reasons. When I turned 15, I could get my driver’s license. At 16, my sweet boyfriend (and now husband) came over and secretly decorated my car with happy birthday messages in white shoe polish. At 18, I could legally buy alcohol in Louisiana (and vote, of course, but I wasn’t that worried about that). I celebrated my newfound alcohol purchasing power by going Cajun dancing with friends and getting completely hammered on some horrible and toxic drinks called ‘hand grenades.’ The next morning, my mom drove down to New Orleans to take me out for lunch and celebrate the day with me, but I was too hung-over and sick to leave my dorm room. We spent my birthday with me feeling like I was dying in bed and her sitting next to me and making sure I knew how disappointed she was in my lack of maturity and judgment. By the end of her visit, though, I think she did feel a little sorry for me and my pathetic-ness.

The drinking age changed to 21 sometime between my 18^th and 21^st birthdays, so it was necessary to, again, celebrate my legality. By the time I turned 21, though, I was through with college, so things were a little more civilized. My grandparents came to New Orleans and treated my sister, several of our friends and me to a very fancy dinner at Commander’s Palace. I got my hair done and wore a suit. I was the belle of the ball. It was special and sophisticated and a day I won’t ever forget, because I got to spend it with my beloved grandparents. Still, after they went back to their hotel, the rest of us headed out in our finery to our usual bar, where we drank copious amounts of beer that we had purchased legally.

Recently, my most memorable birthday was my 30^th birthday. As I approached 30, I had ideas of how it would be celebrated. Most of these ideas involved Jim planning some incredible themed party for me, which all of my friends attended. I think glitter was definitely part of my musings…and costumes. As it turned out, I had to work even though it was a Saturday and then I had to go home and help pack a U-Haul with what was left of our belongings as we prepared to move to England. Jim, contrary to my 30^th birthday dreams, was already living in London, so no fabulous surprise party for me! But my whole family came down to spend my birthday with me and help me pack and we sat around on various stools and folding chairs in our barren living room while I opened my presents. After they headed home, with our two cats and the U-Haul, I dragged myself out for dinner with friends and then home, exhausted, to sleep on an air mattress which I was sharing with our dog Buster. It definitely wasn’t the celebration that I was planning for turning 30, but I haven’t forgotten it. I also was adamant that Jim not forget it and my efforts were rewarded with a trip to the Greek Island of Rhodes for my 31^st birthday celebrations.

Sometimes my birthday coincides with another great October family tradition: Pigfest! The official Pigfest started 18 years ago and has gone from a small get together with close friends roasting a pig, to an invite only town party involving roasting several pigs for 24 hours straight on rotating spits. There are teams of men who baste the pigs in some special pig marinade that is applied with mops and turn the spits at specific intervals. Other teams of men grill goat meat and smoke oysters and supply various other delicious goods and sundries. The women man a huge potluck table, dishing out food to the masses for several meals a day and making sure that no one takes more than his or her fair share of desserts and that small children say please and thank you. On a small stage, live music is played and the Pigfesters sit and listen on hay bales or in portable chairs that they have brought with them. There are tents pitched all over the grounds and one man—a confederate army buff—brings a cannon, which he shoots off periodically. In previous years the cannon shooting was unannounced, but now, after almost giving several of the party attendees heart attacks, he shoots it at scheduled and announced times. There is a general feeling of good will and good times and good food and people gather around a big bonfire and play instruments and sing songs well into the night. For me Pigfest has always been a chance to be with my family and sit in what became known as “The Carpenter Compound, “ a well lit and well sheltered camping area that my Dad , who is known for his military style tarping skills (I’ll talk more about this when I get around to writing about our family trips to the beach), sets up each year. Within this compound are rugged tables, comfortable camping chairs and coolers stocked with beer, soft drinks and water. It is the perfect retreat when the live music gets too live or too bad or you just need a break from the Pigfest masses.

When I was in college, I rounded up a group of friends and we all caravanned from New Orleans to Tallulah for Pigfest and to celebrate my birthday. Obviously the plan was that we would camp out, but invariably we ended up camping all over my parents’ house, using up the hot water as we all showered and complicating things by insisting on riding the four wheeler all over the farm. My parents generously put up with this bunch of self-involved, unhelpful young people, feeding and sheltering us for an entire weekend, and we had a great time being irresponsible, drinking too much and trying to be cooler than we actually were. My favorite Pigfest was spent surrounded by these friends (because they were, and still are, some of my closest friends), full of pulled pork, dancing to the music that was being played, and delighted, in a drunken way, when an Elvis impersonator drove through the crowds and put on a show that was probably not as entertaining or funny as we thought it was. We played with a hacky sack and threw a Frisbee and hung out in our cars with music blaring. These were pre-Carpenter Compound days and we set up our tents in a big mass and proceeded to party the night away. It didn’t rain and it wasn’t hot and we didn’t care about getting sleep. It was just a fun and adolescent weekend.

Many years later I went home for Pigfest on my birthday. Jim was stuck at work in Houston and I decided it would be a good idea to go running on the farm with our Buster. I’m sure that if Jim had been there, he would have reminded me that this was, in fact, NOT a good idea for several reasons. First of all, Buster was a bow-legged, toothless, aging beagle who was not particularly interested in running. Mostly he wanted to sniff. Running with him was actually more like dragging him behind me as we each attempted to assert control over the situation. To compound the bad idea that was taking Buster running in the first place, I decided to let him off the leash. Again, if Jim had been there he would have reminded me that, based on history, I should have known better, but maybe because it was my birthday, I thought that if I let Buster off the leash, he would just run along beside me, sniffing to his heart’s content. Sadly, I was mistaken. Instead of running beside me, he took off across the fields at breakneck speed. I’ve never seen a dog move so fast. In fact, if I hadn’t been so distraught about it, I would have been really impressed. Instead, I bolted after him, fell into a hole, twisted my ankle, had to spend the majority of my birthday in the emergency room waiting for an x-ray, unable to reach Jim, who was having a hell day on his project in Houston, and feeling sorry for myself. Then I had to be transported into Pigfest on a giant golf cart because crutches and the mud weren’t really a good mix. And that was just embarrassing.

I have not been to Pigfest since we moved to England four years ago. Pigfest 2010 starts next Friday—on my birthday—and, again, we won’t be there. This year, preoccupied with my tantrum throwing toddler and heavily pregnant with the next baby, Pigfest and my birthday have been the last things on my mind. We are half way through October and I have yet to say something like, “It’s my birthday month, so I get to do ________!” or “I’m going to buy this for myself as a treat for my birthday!” I haven’t even dropped major hints about what fabulous things I’m expecting my fabulous husband to do for me in celebration of the most important day of the year. Instead, I can’t stop thinking about how in four short weeks we’ll have a new baby and suddenly be a family of four; that I maybe should pack my hospital bag; that maybe we should get something for the baby to sleep in; that Evie will have to learn to share the love and attention that she gets exclusively with a younger sibling. There is a lot to celebrate, but my birthday is kind of low on the list. This year, that’s actually ok with me. But, next year I’m to be expecting a big costume party to celebrate 35 years of fabulousness, two kids and my awesome mothering skills. There had better be things with my name painted all over them, a piñata, glitter, roller skating…and maybe we’ll even make it to Pigfest.

Angry London

Prologue: I wrote this a while ago after experiencing the general nastiness that prevails on the buses in London. I didn't post it because, generally, as a foreigner, if I say anything critical about London or England and its customs or people, I get some response from an insulted Brit who thinks I should go back to America. But today, after about a month of avoiding the bus, I decided to give it another chance. The first thing that happened is that no one, despite my obvious advanced pregnancy, offered me a seat. I wasn't going far and I had no expectations that anyone would be polite, so that wasn't so bad. But as I was getting off, a man, well into his 50's shoved an older man who looked to be in his 80's out of the way and when the older man protested the offending passenger told him to "Piss off you old coot." It was shocking and disgusting behavior and, once again, I plan to walk miles and miles before I set foot on another London bus.

The bus shifted and I held on tightly to Evie’s stroller while simultaneously balancing the Richard Scarry book on the window so that she could, using the labeled picture of a pig in his underwear, identify her own eyes, ears, nose, etc. as we made our lumbering way home. Suddenly, yelling erupted in the back. The woman sitting next to me, who smelled slightly of urine and had muttered profanities at me under her breath a few minutes earlier when I asked if she would move her bag off the seat so that I could sit with my child, whipped around to check out the action.

‘I’m just saying, why don’t you give the lady your seat?!’ yelled the first man.

‘I don’t need to get a bloody lecture on politeness. If she wants my seat, all she has to do is ask me, IN ENGLISH, if I would mind letting her sit down!’ the second man spat back. Then he sarcastically asked the woman in question—IN ENGLISH-- if she would like his seat.

When there is an angry altercation in London, I’ve learned it’s best to pretend like it’s not happening. If you are unfortunate enough to make eye contact with some of the super angry people who ride around this city on the buses and tubes, there is a good chance that their anger will be directed at you. So, Evie and I happily continued to identify her body parts. But I couldn’t help but notice how miserable everyone on the bus looked…and it wasn’t just because they weren’t enjoying the fight going on at the back of the bus.

I have never lived in a city so full of rage filled people as London. I used to think that people in Boston were angry, but once I got used to their accents, I realized that they just sounded angry, but were, generally, a pretty happy lot. Yes, they honk their horns more than necessary and anyone would get in a bad mood during the kinds of winters that they have endure every year, but I can’t remember a time when I was in Boston and felt like the people around me were scarily angry. New Orleans also has its fair share of angry people these days, but I would say they have a right to be a little bitter after the horrors of Katrina and the more recent oil spill fiasco. Still, they are pulling themselves up by their bootstraps and that’s the attitude that prevailed when I lived there, too.

But in London, people are just pissed off and I can’t figure out why. It’s a beautiful and prosperous city. The weather gets a little rainy, but the winters and the summers are mild. They get incredible benefits from the government including healthcare. They have good public transportation. They have international respect. People come from all over the world to live here and visit.

One afternoon, on the bus, Jim happened to glance over at a guy who was swearing and gesticulating with his group of friends while his small daughter sat next to him. Unfortunately, Jim made the forbidden eye contact and the man pounced, unleashing a tirade of insults, asking Jim if he ‘fancied’ him, threatening to kick his ass. Wisely, Jim stared out the window and pretended like he couldn’t hear the guy, but inside he was terrified. Knife crimes are rampant in London and Jim was debating whether or not it would be safer to stay on the bus (where everyone was also pretending like nothing was happening, including the bus driver) or to get off. Either way, he could count on the fact that no one would help him if the guy and his friends decided to jump him. Luckily, they lost interest.

Another morning, early in my second pregnancy, Evie and I were walking to see a friend when a car came flying around the corner. We were in the middle of the street and the driver pulled as close as he could without hitting us and then proceeded to berate me for half a block, calling me a stupid blind cow and some horrendous obscenities before peeling off down the street. I was shocked that someone would be so aggressive towards a mother and her baby who were innocently crossing the street. Actually, I was shocked that someone would be that aggressive towards ANYONE and it ruined my morning. It did provide me with an opportunity to tell Evie that some people aren’t very nice. As usual, she happily chattered away, oblivious to the situation and I reflected on how lucky she is to have lived a life so far during which no one has ever been mean to her.

When I mention to friends that someone was nasty to me on the streets of London, they usually have stories of their own. One friend was hit by an obese woman’s cane repeatedly until she gave up her seat on the bus. Another, struggling to get off the bus with her baby and no one to help her was berated by another passenger for pushing instead of being offered assistance. I have watched teenaged boys throwing food at people passing by and no one did or said anything due to the fear of being stabbed. When Jim and I heard a couple in the throes of a fight the other night, we crossed the street. I witnessed five people walk past another couple, as the man slammed the woman up against a wall and hit her. I called the police, but not until I was well out of sight.

Living in London has, for the majority of the time, been a joy. We have had incredible experiences and happy times and by the time we leave we will have had two children here and made some of the best friends of our lives. But there is this underlying feeling of anxiety and unhappiness that the city projects. We will miss it here, but we won’t miss the anger.

It's a bug's world

Much of my life has been punctuated by the presence of bugs and creepy crawlies. This is not a fact that I have always been comfortable with, but something that I had to learn to accept growing up in Louisiana, where the humidity is suffocating and the mosquitoes are as big as crows and as bloodthirsty as vampires. OFF and other bug sprays and repellents just seemed to egg them on and we spent our summer days and evenings splattering mosquitoes drunk with our own blood all over our arms and legs. I never tried this, but it was rumored that if you let the mosquitoes keep drinking, they would eventually burst. Personally, I have always preferred cold-blooded mosquito murder.

When the mosquitoes were not eating us alive, the horseflies were. As soon as the sun started to set, the giant, blood-sucking flies moved in. They especially liked to target us in the swimming pool, focusing on our faces and heads as we bobbed up and down, dodging them and trying to escape their painful bites. Usually they succeeded in driving us indoors…where the cockroaches were waiting.

At our house, the cockroaches were as under control as they could be with regular visits from the ‘bug man.’ The occasional big one came in from outside, but they were never a major problem (my mother would be horrified if she thought I was suggesting that we lived in a roach infested home. We did not). In my college and grad school apartments in New Orleans, though, it was another story. There was no controlling the humongous, scuttling, drunkenly flying bugs and our lack of general cleanliness, typical of college students, didn’t help the situation. Running across your floor or up your walls, these mammoth cockroaches were highly disturbing, but when they took flight it was as if they had no control and the only point of reference for landing always seemed to be the closest human. I have suffered the injustice of having a cockroach land on me on more than one occasion and will never forget how it feels to have one’s sticky, clinging legs, clenched to my arm or my thigh.

I also will never forget the feeling that came over me when I was lying in bed at night or turned the light on in the bathroom and realized that I was sharing space with an insect that was so big I could actually hear it moving around. One fateful night, I walked into my bathroom and heard the distinct sound of a very large roach, scuttling around in our bathroom cabinet. I could see its antenna silhouetted against the wall and decided that the best course of action was just to close the cabinet and pretend like I didn’t know it was there. Having accomplished that, I nervously walked over to the sink, where I nonchalantly lifted up an overturned Mardi Gras cup only to be greeted with ANOTHER cockroach, which my tender-hearted roommate had decided to trap and remove from the premises humanely. Unfortunately she got side tracked by a phone call and the cockroach remained in its prison until I came along. I nearly had a heart attack that night.

Cockroaches aside, perhaps the most disgusting thing that happened in that apartment was the boll weevil infestation (as reference to by my friend and former roommate Katie in my cooking blog). Being poor graduate students and not wanting to be wasteful, we decided that rather than throw out all of our boll weevil infested food, we were just going to skim the boll weevils off the surface of the rice and cereal and eat them anyway. For several days we lived liked this, attempting to ignore the fact that a lot of our food had tiny bugs in it. Eventually we came to our senses, tossed the food and had the house fumigated. I still can’t believe that we stooped so low as to knowingly eat bugs rather than just buy some new rice. I know for a fact that if our food had been infested with roaches instead of boll weevils, we wouldn’t have even considered such a thing.

England is blessed with cool weather and, therefore, fewer bugs. I’m sure that there are cockroaches in London, but I have lived four blissful years without encountering one of them. These days we are happy share our house with a few spiders and the occasional silverfish. Every evening before her bath, Evie and I sing Eensy Weensy Spider and relocate the resident bathroom spiders from the tub to a safe corner so that they don’t drown. I am superstitious and know that killing a spider—even if it kind of can’t be prevented when they are hanging out in the tub drain—is bad luck, so I try my best to do right by them. Occasionally an unfortunate spider is eaten by our cat Finchley and every once in a while, when I start to feel outnumbered, I do some population management with the vacuum cleaner (with the idea, obviously, that they are just being relocated to a new living space inside of the vacuum bag and NOT killed), but mostly we manage to co-exist in harmony with the creepy crawlies in our little flat. After all, they, like the rest of us, are just trying to make a living. And they aren't the size of small cows.