There were sunny days, too.
THE FIRST WORDS in our half-century of “She Said’s” were spoken on or about April 10, 1956, a few days after the birth of the second Roach girl, Marion, a red-haired baby of nearly 10 pounds. Her actual birth date was April 7, but her existence wasn’t remarkable until she came home from the hospital with my mother, ending my life as an only child forever. She upended my 22-month-old reign with her birth, and she has not stopped.
In the story I tell myself about the day of my first great loss (which is not the same one baby sister Marion tells), my beloved Grandmother (the original Marion), and I are at the dining room table, sewing the satin binding on something called a receiving blanket. For all the attention we are giving it and the special-sounding name it bears, it still looks like my Blankie, the one that doesn’t smell good except to me after all the hours I’ve pressed it to my nose and mouth, soothing myself, drooling and sucking on the slippery, saliva-soaked corners.
What are we receiving with this blanket? Is this a birthday or Christmas, and will there be gifts?
DADDY HAS GONE to get Mommy at the hospital. They are bringing “the baby” home, but it’s all a jumble, this talk about “the baby.” My beloved doll Betsy Wetsy is the baby, and I look after her. I am the baby. One trace of memory remains clear: I am the smallest but most important person in the picture, and I am happy to leave it at that.
But then the car pulls up and in walks Mommy, carrying something. Everybody is making the sounds and faces they have previously reserved for me at this swaddled, unseen thing in Mommy’s arms. I want them to go back outside; to have a do-over. I want to sew again quietly with Grandma.
But Mommy walks right through, heading directly toward the staircase, and that was it. Enter me, Margaret, stage right, crossing to the foot of the enclosed staircase, where Mommy and bundle are ascending.
“PUT HER DOWN,” I say, being quite clear about my feelings some 20 years before any therapy began. “PUT HER DOWN.” (You can read Marion’s version, which has the same quote, but includes words like “adorable” and “bouncy.”)
That day I was no longer an only child. That day I became a sister, and those were my opening remarks on the subject. (Perhaps you have your own such tale to tell in the comments?)
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Yes, Margaret I feel your pain. Even these some forty-six years later. I believe my exact words when my mother brought home my baby sister were “take her back”. Fortunately, she didn’t listen to me.
Welcome, Tammy. “Take her back” would work, too…perfect. Thank you for telling me that I’m not the only bitchy older sister to have said such a thing. :) See you soon again, I hope.
There were exactly 24 months and 21 days between my birth and my sister’s. 24 months and 21 days of a universe that existed only to revolve around me. A world that was charmed by every one of my mispronounced words. (“I wanna da” were among the first, and were dutifully recorded in my baby book. They were to become my leitmotif, evolving in adulthood into the more comprehensible, “I want that”, and usually accompanied by the handing of my credit card to an eager sales person.) I was beautiful, I was smart, I was funny and I was adored.
And then, after 24 months and 21 days of my perfect life, they brought home a bald, rashy stranger. How could they think that blotchy, wailing piglet was cute? Didn’t they see how perfectly porcelain my skin was? How shiny and thick my hair was? How adorable I looked in my red swiss-dot dress and patent leather shoes? Look at me, don’t look at her!
I pulled out all the stops in my efforts to make this intruder disappear. I pretended to like her and tried to be near her at all times, hoping they’d notice how inferior she was to my perfection, and take her back. I threw tantrums. I sulked.
In the end, I couldn’t deny the obvious. The creature they called “my sister” was there for keeps. That day, I added two more words to my budding vocabulary, “Ho thit.”
“Ho, thit,” is right, Linda (and I am hysterical reading your comment, thank you). :)
ROTFLOL over that one, Miss Linda. But what I really want to know is: do you still have that red swiss dot dress?
Yo, Linda: Ha ha ha ha ha. A “bald, rashy stranger,” is fabulous beyond words. However, since I was sporting a full head of gorgeous, wavy, red hair, I just can’t imagine what it was MY sister had to complain about.
Okay, I told my story on Marion’s post about Margaret’s middle name, but it goes here even better. So with apologies for cross-posting, I repeat myself to say that I am also the older by two years, and when my dad called home to tell me I had a baby sister, I said, “I wanted a swimming pool!”
It’s so strange how we can remember how terrible it felt to no longer be the baby, the cute one, the center of attention. We were two! How remarkable that we remember those emotions so clearly. Now, whenever I see an adorable baby with an older sibling hanging around, I try to ignore the baby and lavish attention (perhaps creepily, I fear) on the older one.
Hey there, dailymammal. We love the cross post aspect here. That’s such a storyteller’s privilege, knitting from one narrative into the next. Please come back with more.