Marion Roach Smith’s alternate sisterly reality, with Margaret Roach.
I LOVE THIS SONG BY RICHARD THOMPSON, called “1952 Vincent Black Lightning” after the bike model, and every time I hear it, I think of my red-haired sister, Marion. I don’t even know if she knows the song (or Richard Thompson, or his ex-wife, Linda Thompson, or their son, Teddy Thompson, glorious musicians all). Do you, Marion? But as Richard’s cult hit says…Red hair and black leather, my favorite color scheme… [click to continue…]
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WHO SAYS SISTERS don’t arrive in the cabbage patch? That’s where I found this beauty, which reminds me of no one so much as my sister, Margaret. Organic, beautiful and snappy, while this little darling is not quite as cute as the one I found in the spring, here’s my adopted sister for autumn, the closest thing to Margaret since, well, Margaret.
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TWO SISTERS PLUS ONE BOOK equals two soups. This is the sisterly cooking math we did when our friend and uber-agent Kris Dahl sent us both a new book, and two households went on a pretty much liquid diet. But oh, what liquid! [click to continue…]
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I F WE’RE TALKING HEAVY MACHINERY, Marion, make mine a tractor. You know I am all about terra firma, and will be happy to leave this life without ever stepping into another boat (even if it does have a cool little outboard). This is my first photo, in response to Marion’s throwdown about favorite things, whether your sister knows about them, or shares them–or not. If you have a photo to share, email it to us with a brief caption at thesisterproject at gmail dot com (you know how to format that), and we’ll make a slideshow. Yes? Say yes. Marion asked us to, and you don’t want to argue with a red-headed baby sister; trust me on that.
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Margaret's godfather, Max Hirsch, in a Life magazine photo
JUNE 10 IS MARGARET’S BIRTHDAY, and while I won’t tell you her age (though you can find it on the TSP site), I will celebrate the occasion by telling you a not-so-secret secret about her, which is that each year at Belmont Stakes time, my sister has some explaining to do. [click to continue…]
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Me, at about the age of those precious school-bus years w/Andy Hattenrash.
WHEN WE LEFT OUR HEROINES, one was standing in our parents’ bedroom, holding a photo in her 9-year-old hand. She just wanted ice cream and, as a result of that hunger, came away with a whole lot more than she was after. It would take her little sister—me—14 years to come to the same conclusion that Margaret did in that instant: that our mother was having an affair. [click to continue…]
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THREE MONTHS AGO THIS WEEK, three other “sisters” and I started The Sister Project network. Some 32,000 visits and 900 comments later, we’re celebrating our baby blog by each bubbling up our readers’ favorite posts. Enjoy the most-popular, most-commented things you may have missed, below…and don’t forget to go meet my “sisters” (and bring yours along next time).
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BELATED, PERHAPS, but better late than never: 25 random things about our childhood, from my side of the equation, in answer to Marion’s.
1. The prefix Mar- has been a persistent, insistent sound in my life. I am named for a grandma I never met, Margaret; am granddaughter to another I revered, Marion; I am sister to a Marion, too; best friend to a Marco; ex-aide to a Martha. I am regularly called all of those names (except Marco, owing to gender realities), and answer to them by reflex. If you utter that first critical syllable, I will turn my head or come running before you form the next. [click to continue…]
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A YOUNG WOMAN is breezing through the kitchen on the way to the refrigerator. Wearing tennis shorts, a T-shirt, her long red hair in a ponytail, she’s bare-foot, 22 years old, and the phone rings. I can do this with this scene—make it third-person—the way we can at any of those moments just before life takes a tilt; that old where were you when thing. [click to continue…]
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YES, MARION, YOU ARE CORRECT: We Roach sisters share a story about a particular and powerful photograph (and not the one of us in our annual matching Easter dresses from your recent post re: all this). And as you say it was an image that changed my life forever, even though you, my only sibling, never saw it, remaining safe from awareness until adulthood when it was easier (maybe) to handle than when I found the photo, at age 9. [click to continue…]
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MARION LOVES WATER, Margaret (left) earth.
First time here? Here's the idea: The Sister Project is a network of blogs about the many facets of the word sister, and the concept of sisterhood. A sisterhood of sister blogs, you could say. Whatever sister means to you, from identical twin to sister-in-law (or in friendship or in feminism), we’ll make room to listen in about it or express it on TSP. Like the slogan up top on our homepage says, “Don’t you have something to say to your sister?” We've got galleries of art and literature by and about sisters, and a Sisterpedia of sisterly trivia...but now we're getting ahead of ourselves. The quick study: Learn more about TSP, and how to find your way around. And oh—a giant, sisterly welcome.
No surprise, really, that sisterhood, often life’s longest relationship and always one of its most important, has been the Muse for so much creative self-expression by women, and also by men.
TSP’s Galleries were created to show off that outpouring of art and craft, poetry and prose. Come see a show or two—no ticket required, no lines to get in—and suggest others whose work we ought to showcase.
As the suffix of its name suggests, TSP's Sisterpedia is the reference section, one we’re hoping you’ll help us grow to maturity by adding your knowledge in the comments. Turn us on to new facts and figures, whether for the branch of our ‘library’ called Sistory (history from a sister point of view, from the Muses of ancient Greece to 60s Girl Groups and beyond) or the one called Sibling Science (what makes sisters tick, genetically and behaviorally). Or just click around and have a good read. See you there.
