Marion Roach Smith’s alternate sisterly reality, with Margaret Roach.
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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MARGARET WAS EEYORE when we were young, seeing the impossible in everything. She has grown up to be Kanga, her youthful negativity evolving into a carefulness for all things, as well as an exactness for detail, reminding us not only to take our medicine, but when to do so. Me, I was born a Tigger, and show little chance of ever growing up to be anybody else. I bounce, and when people try to get me to give up my bounce, I bounce away. [click to continue…]
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IHAVE SCHEDULED A TOUR OF MY CLOSET for the next time Marion visits my tiny house. Apparently she has not seen it, though her post the other day about how different we are on this score of closets would lead you to infer otherwise. This is how it is between sisters, I think: We know them so well, and yet not at all, and that’s what makes the bond and also the friction that is the unique chemistry of siblings. I have just gone upstairs to take my closet’s measurements, to try to get this straight. [click to continue…]
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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. [click to continue…]
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Some days, Margaret was downright friendly.
HOLD ON, SISTERS. You can’t think that you can take on Dooce’s bundle-to-be without me. Second sisters? Little sisters? I’ve kind of got this one covered. As anyone who blogs or reads one knows by now, the story of Leta, daughter of dooce (dot com), sounds like nothing so much as a cyber-update of mythic proportions because it is. My TSP sisters Paige and Anastasia—along with thousands of other online readers—are pacing the virtual waiting-room floor in expectation of the birth of the second daughter of uber-blogger, Heather B. Armstrong, wondering all along the e-way how things will go when Leta gets a little sister. For Margaret and me (big sister, little sister, in that order) it all started, as these things do, at the beginning. [click to continue…]
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NEXT TIME YOU get your feathers ruffled about where you stand in some pecking order, keep in mind that while you may have spent thousands in therapy on this topic, and others have racked in untold millions writing and selling books that define your prescribed sorry circumstances to you, remember that the guy who authored the idea of who pecks who, when, where, and why, was talking about nothing more than, yup, chickens.
But before you stop payment on that most recent $150 check to your shrink, read on. It will make you feel better. [click to continue…]
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FRIEND SLOANE TANEN made Marion a chick shrink. Click to learn why.
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.