It seemed that lots of people — including total strangers — had plenty of advice to offer my sister and my brother-in-law before the birth of their first child, an event the entire extended family anticipated for late summer 2003. And it wasn\’t just a matter of kindly (if ultimately incorrect) projections about the baby\’s gender or rueful warnings about all those sleepless nights to come.
Dear Wendy, My father left my mother when my sister was 8 and I was 5. His visits became increasingly infrequent until, about 20 years ago, we stopped hearing from him altogether.
Oh boy, do the Israelites slip up this week. They have just received the Ten Commandments, have heard God speak to them and have vowed to do all that God commands them, even if they do not fully understand why they must. Forty days later, they\’re dancing around a calf made of melted golden earrings and calling it a god! What happened?
Mallory Lewis grew up with a very famous sister, but she laughs if you ask about sibling rivalry. \”She slept in a shoebox in the closet, I had my own room, it was fine by me.\”
But this is no horror story of an evil stepsister. Mallory Lewis\’ sister is Lamb Chop, the adorable, perpetually 6-year-old puppet of children\’s entertainer Shari Lewis. Beloved by millions since their 1957 debut on \”The Captain Kangaroo Show,\” Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop would go on to entertain generations of kids with their PBS series and videos. Mallory Lewis began writing her mom\’s newspaper column for kids at the age of 12, and by the early \’90s, she was head writer and producer for mom\’s series.
It is summer, a long time ago, and I am lying on a terrace overlooking an ancient garden full of rosebushes and fruit trees. The days have been so hot, the asphalt on the sidewalk melts under my feet if I dare step out of the house. At night, the temperature drops. My sisters and I take the hose to the yard and stand there as the day\’s heat rises out of the brick floor in a cloud of white steam. My mother spreads our bed on the terrace, and we crawl into it, hours before we can actually fall asleep. We thrash about in the cool sheets that smell of dust, summer and lavender bleach; listen to the music that drifts up from our grandmother\’s radio downstairs; eat fresh mulberries we have picked from the tree in our own yard.
I had to buy a present for my sister recently. Shopping for women, if you don\’t happen to actually be a woman yourself, is a nightmare.
I\’ve noticed that when men go shopping for clothes, there is a sense of purposefulness about it. We\’re going to the store to buy something, some specific thing in response to a specific need. A shirt. I need a shirt. We march in, try something on. If it fits, we buy it and march back out. No squealing, no cooing, no fanfare. We take care of our needs. There is a sense of accomplishment. We live from shirt to shirt.
I have three sisters, two older and one younger. My youngest sister, Debbie, was born when I was 8 years old. In the months leading up to her birth, I remember clearly the anxiety I felt over the possibility that it might turn out to be a boy and I might end up with a brother.
It\’s a familiar story. Kids grow up, parents sell the family home and move to some sunnier climate, some condo somewhere, some smaller abode.
Gloria Hernandez Trujillo, 51, grew up in what she thought was a traditional Catholic home in Monterey Park. Her mother sent the children to mass and catechism classes at Our Lady of Solitude church in East Los Angeles. Trujillo made her first communion at the age of 8, wearing the requisite white frilly dress. At 12, she was confirmed, like many of the Latino children in her Eastside neighborhood.
Ethan Gura doesn\’t remember his sister. Still, he cannot forgether. He can\’t forget that Rebecca Alexandra Gura died in 1991 after afour and a half year battle with leukemia. She was then six yearsold. He was three.
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