Playing by the Sister Rules

The Sister Project is starting to write down its rules for sisterhood. Mine follow; Paige and Anastasia have some, too. We hope you’ll add to the list.

W HEN OUR DAUGHTER was very young, we made up a game to play with her. Giving little thought to it and coming out of a long, hot car ride, it was designed with as much depth as a wading pool, meant to be something merely to cool us off at the moment. Not attempting to limn some psychological line here, instead, like most parents, we were merely trying to survive until the next rest stop. But the game tricked us.

“Are you a tree or a bush?” someone would ask someone else. “Are you a river or an ocean?” And the person would answer and then think up one to ask someone else. Sometimes this led to great delightful conversations with a 4-year-old, about who and what we really are.

“Oh no, Mom. I think you’re popcorn, not potato chips,” she’d argue firmly. And I agree. I am. How nice to finally know that for certain.

Want to play? If the list merely read:

Are you Dickens or Austin?
Are you sausage or bacon?
Are you musicals or opera?

…you’d probably have something to say.

Not Margaret, who would check “neither,” if such a box existed among the choices. And I know that. But I can easily broaden a list to include her.

Flats or heels?
City or country?
Yoga or Pilates?
Cats or dogs?
Bath or shower?
London or Paris?

Or I can narrow it right down, knowing not only that there is preference here for her, but also knowing which it is:

Spinach or broccoli?
Ezra Pound or T.S. Eliot?
Gladiolas or scented geraniums?

Or, further still, I can narrow it to the where again there is no choice at all but here it’s because she loves both things and would prefer not to choose only one.

Leonard Cohen or Bob Dylan?
Johnny Cash or Neil Young?
Frogs or birds?

In other words, I know her, as evidenced in the small choices I know she would make, if asked to do so. And while there could be comfort in that, there is not always comfort in that. In fact there is a great deal of discomfort in that. And here’s the rub: That’s good.

Of course I could easily devise the list that Margaret would hate having to answer in any public way. Just the list itself would reveal a great many things about her.

But why would I do that? We could all do this only for someone we know well, revealing the kinds of things we all rely on to stay as our backstory instead of our public face. These are those things we offer as currency only in the unique intimacies that characterize marriage, partnership or sisterhood. And I’d never tell you Margaret’s; I’d never tell you mine, and I’d never expect my husband or my sister, who know mine, to use them as currency in trade with you.

Knowing that someone else has yours in her pocket is both the pleasure and the danger we live with when we love. The comfort comes from knowing they are safely tucked away but that they identify you. The resulting discomfort comes from knowing someone knows them at all. It’s a sweet and sour sauce, to be sure, of which a little goes a long way. It’s nice to know someone has them. Use them? You never should. Have them? It helps that someone does when they deal with you.

These begin to sound like rules to live by, don’t they?

1.  That you have bits of knowledge about your sister that you use but do not tell.
2.  That you use them wisely without speaking of them, drawing from them without direct reference.
3.  That if you trade them, be prepared to pay the price.

Those are my rules.

Are there others? I think there are.

Let’s build a list.

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