“We grew up in the same house, but lived in different countries.” “A Short History of Ukrainian Tractors” by Marina Lewycka
Yesterday was my sister’s birthday. Some of you may have already caught on that my sister is a sore and troubled subject.
We may not observe her birthday. This is at her request, since she turned sixteen or so.
I very selfishly ignored this request whenever I could during the past 30 years, and whenever possible, I dropped her a line or left a gift on her doorstep. This persistent initiative was not appreciated, and now I wish I had not “ intruded” or gone against her wishes. She finds me disrespectful: true, I did not respect her wish. She finds me selfish: true, giving feels good. She finds me insensitive: look who’s talking.
Then again, Autism is a form of hyper-sensitivity: too much life where there should be fact. It clouds her brain and gives her a muddied palet with which to paint her own ideas. The heart is thus never fed with translucent imaginings. The arms never give back a breathing, warm embrace. We are greeted formally.
Sense impressions ought to be left as blips on the radar, giving coordinates only for what you are keeping an open mind on. But for her, each swish around the scannable filed gives a new map that needs to be read afresh. The cows haven't budged and the lambs have flicked no more than a tail, yet the whole meadow has changed for her. Always too many boats passing in the night fog of her mind. How to signal to them all in return - even if they weren't signalling to you and you merely picked them up as you do.
My sister’s arguments against celebrating her feastday have long since outgrown an adolescent depression: what’s to celebrate when you are tied to a rock and get your liver pecked out every night again? There is no point explaining that this myth is really very funny (see the ever hilarious Prometheus cartoons) and a testament to how we can only be truly Promethean in our suffering with a healthy dose of humour. †
The comic strips I sent her as my little find one drizzly Sunday afternoon, were received with a caustic and baleful reproach, did I not realise there was nothing funny about being sentenced to the same future for all eternity? My sister doesn’t do change.
A Little Love Can Be Insufficient
My mother does subtle. No shouting off rooftops. No laundry outside. Keep your mind on a latch or your brains might fall out. My father doesn't trust anything he hasn't tried and tested for himself. Which can make for a bit of a Catch 22 in trying new things.
It wasn't that my sister and I grew up without love. It just didn't come packaged as such. You could fish it out of the insurances that were paid on your behalf annually. Or the meals that were never missed, and served punctually. Plus there was an interest taken in you by our mother, if you cared for it (my sister didn't much). You'ld have to find her first, but then she'd put her book aside and show the patience of a martyr with whatever you had to bring her.
All this was fine by me. Only now it's held against me: I was told the other day that I was a very needy child. My sister wasn't. Just so I knew.
My sister who could not make love out of life like I was forever doing with a hundred and one projects on the go - reaching out, communicating, making better, exploring, trying something new - seemed ironically without special needs: a docile, affable, charmed, genius child (once the colic subsided and the terrible twos had passed and you blamed her fits on my pestering - which I never felt I was doing.
Maybe somebody should have treated me as someone with special needs if I was considered such a problem child and nightmare sister. What is it with all this eleventh hour accusation of being myself? Is it tit for tat? I warn my mother she needs to keep a clearer head on her shoulders; I feel my sister needs to stop feeling suicidal; so I get to be the most deranged of all for interfering with other people's state of mind.Leave well enough alone. Mind your own business. Is it really best for everybody like that, only not for me? Am I the odd one out? The demanding, boat-rocking rebel without a cause?
No Pain For The Fearless
My mother goes through life telling herself she is fearless. One might admire her chirpy bright-side-of-life attitude. She always comes up with a solution to everything. Gets things done promptly: up for the first dental appointment, on the first day of the week; picks up the phone the second the plumber is open for calls. Makes do with very little: knits all her own jumpers, sews her own skirts with the same Burda pattern she's had for fifty years. She rustles up a dinner after we've come home from our drive back up from the South of france, with sprouted spuds and minced meat put in the freezer only a day after the sell-by date, to keep it as fresh as it was - never mind we’re out of salt, salt is very bad for you; she’s known that since being pregnant with me. All our dinners since were insipid. If you were dehydrated in summer, there was always Marmite and Ryvitas for lunch. Her father had learned from colonists that a lick of salt could save your life in the heat. Her beloved grandmother had learened to like Marmite in Trinidad. It wasn't all bad in her childhood. She adored her gran.
There is a tiny eye-opener to her relationship with this woman. She came with a role ready for my mother as martyr. For her face was paralysed after a minor operation. One small nerve was cut, and the whole of one side had flopped irreversibly.
My mother was very defensive of this favorite person in her life, and she'd yell at children she felt were staring at her grandmother when they walked past. It's a heroic story, but the disfigurement features very dominantly as a characteristic of this grandmother. It feels like two misfits found eachother; but I'm not so certain my great-grandmother was that much bothered by her face after having lived with it for half her adulthood, and walking only through a very posh neighbourhood, not needing to go out much as a lady with a live-in servant. She was divorced however, so maybe that added to her insecurites. Or was she a little bitter maybe? And all the more defiant for it, my mother imitating this as a four year old. I don't know really.
The stories are treasured by my mother, and thus kept very private. Love, afterall was hard come by for my mother, so when she found it, she hoarded it. There it still lies at the bottom of her heart, a little rusty, a little calcinated but here's to praying that it can be regenerated in an after-life flow. For it ain't coming out to play in this one no more.
Metamorphosise to Forgive
I make allowances for the non-existant relationship between my sister and I on autistic grounds.
While my sister lives on in her coccoon, I have turned into a butterfly. My wings may still be crumpled and wet, but I’ve made it out into the real summer sun.
Jupiter, that orange planet, the supplier of juice to the solar plexus, that dancer of joy, has not got his sunny hat on for my sister, or my father (my son fares better on that front). He is a stern despot who has made them martyrs of their independence. My mother is also a martyr, with a painted smile on her Venetian face.
I did not contact my sister (or my mother) yesterday. I left them alone. I hope this year I got the gift right.
. . . to be continued