His name was Tulip, and he had a terminal, incurable disease. Some kind of a horrible cat virus called Feline Something. I've never been good about learning the names of killer diseases--unlike my sister who insisted she was plagued with a bunch of them all through college and those fun years when she was raising her kids. It forced her to give up her dream of becoming "Cherry Ames, RN," For those of you too young to remember Cherry Ames, she was a drop-dead gorgeous nurse in
a series of young adult books in the '50s. My sister read all those books at least ten times, and
they motivated her to go to nursing school and become a cruise nurse, a school nurse, a corporate nurse and a bunch of other life-saving roles.
Obsessing about rare and incurable diseases distracted her from mapping out her career plans so she had to table not only nursing school but all other related health areas like phlebotomist and ear piercer. Just the sight of blood was enough to make her squeamish, and luckily she was a decent bicyclist who minimized bloody spills into cars and shrubbery. Otherwise she might have turned into a kind of martyr. And no one, especially a younger sibling, can compete with a martyr.
It wasn't the impact of falling and possibly precipitating a concussion that scared her. It was all those oozing scabs with their crusty, yellowish coverings that really nauseated her and turned her stomach.
Plus my parents told her in not so many words that if she were to become a nurse, they would not ante up the money for a pricey Ivy League education. And since my sister was going to college with the dual objectives of furthering her education and catching a rich husband, she quickly compromised her career goals and decided to become a French language teacher.
Those were good years for both her and me. She concentrated on finding a suitably wealthy mate, and I didn't have to put up with sharing my bedroom with her. It wasn't as if she was a lousy roommate; it was more like she totally ignored me, never truly adjusting to the reality of having a younger sister. It wasn't her fault she was four years older than me. In those first four years of her charmed life, she had lobbied the parents for only child status and had nearly hit the mother load. But then along came me in that fourth year. I was a disappointment to everyone. My parents had wanted a boy and for the life of me I couldn't locate my penis, and my sister had wanted me dead, preferably as a three-month abortion or, if necessary, as the victim of a horribly-gone-wrong delivery where the doctor had mistaken me for the placenta and thrown me out with the
umbilical cord (this was before the time parents insisted on keeping umbilical cords so in case another child turned out to have a dreaded incurable disease, they could use the stem cells in the cord blood to miraculously cure the sick kid).
To say that I was a long-awaited and desired child might be exaggerating a trifle, at least on the part of my sister. It only took her 10 months to come up with a fool-proof plan that guaranteed to turn my parents against me for good. Picture this. I am in a crib cooing and drinking milk like any well-behaved baby when my sister dangles a Golden book in front of me. I look at her dimples, I smile at her sudden interest in me, and I grab the book with my two pudgy fists. RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRip goes the Golden book and then about 99 others on the shelf. It was like an assembly line. She would
hand me each book and smile and nod at me, and I would tear them to shreds.
She teased me with promises of playing scrabble with me when I got older and I fell for the trick. She wanted payment in advance, which was the destruction of her Golden Book library. Always precocious, she had tired of their predictable stories and wanted to move on to the hard stuff like Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. Of course it was inconceivable to her that my parents might want a hand-me-down library for their younger daughter, but just in case the idea occurred to them, it would never happen thanks to the Book Shredder's Ball, an event she denied being complicit in.
About then in my 10-month-old brain, I filed away what turned out to be the first of many efforts to destroy my credibility as an adorable younger daughter. If my sister had failed at her Only Child effort, she would not accept defeat. She would behave as if I had run away from home to join the circus and she was left to accept all the compliments and kisses that were my entitlements but somehow, like with a road detour, had been routed instead to her. She flourished under all that praise, and I grew into a sour moody child with nervous rashes and school phobia. It wasn't a pretty sight.
Around age seven I began to hope she would get that dreaded incurable disease she was always whining about, but it never, ever came to pass. Instead, I think she flipped it to Tulip, my baby ginger cat. She was that powerful in her control over my needs, wishes, and desires that I wouldn't have put it past her to wish an incurable disease on the rest of the family, which by then consisted of six schnauzers and a husband from his own dysfunctional family.
I get the feeling you're going to laugh and say that despotic leadership
would never happen. No one has that kind of mystical and malevolent power, but they said that about Hitler and now they're saying that about Trump. Poor Tulip, he never had a chance.
a series of young adult books in the '50s. My sister read all those books at least ten times, and
they motivated her to go to nursing school and become a cruise nurse, a school nurse, a corporate nurse and a bunch of other life-saving roles.
Obsessing about rare and incurable diseases distracted her from mapping out her career plans so she had to table not only nursing school but all other related health areas like phlebotomist and ear piercer. Just the sight of blood was enough to make her squeamish, and luckily she was a decent bicyclist who minimized bloody spills into cars and shrubbery. Otherwise she might have turned into a kind of martyr. And no one, especially a younger sibling, can compete with a martyr.
It wasn't the impact of falling and possibly precipitating a concussion that scared her. It was all those oozing scabs with their crusty, yellowish coverings that really nauseated her and turned her stomach.
Plus my parents told her in not so many words that if she were to become a nurse, they would not ante up the money for a pricey Ivy League education. And since my sister was going to college with the dual objectives of furthering her education and catching a rich husband, she quickly compromised her career goals and decided to become a French language teacher.
Those were good years for both her and me. She concentrated on finding a suitably wealthy mate, and I didn't have to put up with sharing my bedroom with her. It wasn't as if she was a lousy roommate; it was more like she totally ignored me, never truly adjusting to the reality of having a younger sister. It wasn't her fault she was four years older than me. In those first four years of her charmed life, she had lobbied the parents for only child status and had nearly hit the mother load. But then along came me in that fourth year. I was a disappointment to everyone. My parents had wanted a boy and for the life of me I couldn't locate my penis, and my sister had wanted me dead, preferably as a three-month abortion or, if necessary, as the victim of a horribly-gone-wrong delivery where the doctor had mistaken me for the placenta and thrown me out with the
umbilical cord (this was before the time parents insisted on keeping umbilical cords so in case another child turned out to have a dreaded incurable disease, they could use the stem cells in the cord blood to miraculously cure the sick kid).
To say that I was a long-awaited and desired child might be exaggerating a trifle, at least on the part of my sister. It only took her 10 months to come up with a fool-proof plan that guaranteed to turn my parents against me for good. Picture this. I am in a crib cooing and drinking milk like any well-behaved baby when my sister dangles a Golden book in front of me. I look at her dimples, I smile at her sudden interest in me, and I grab the book with my two pudgy fists. RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRip goes the Golden book and then about 99 others on the shelf. It was like an assembly line. She would
hand me each book and smile and nod at me, and I would tear them to shreds.
She teased me with promises of playing scrabble with me when I got older and I fell for the trick. She wanted payment in advance, which was the destruction of her Golden Book library. Always precocious, she had tired of their predictable stories and wanted to move on to the hard stuff like Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. Of course it was inconceivable to her that my parents might want a hand-me-down library for their younger daughter, but just in case the idea occurred to them, it would never happen thanks to the Book Shredder's Ball, an event she denied being complicit in.
About then in my 10-month-old brain, I filed away what turned out to be the first of many efforts to destroy my credibility as an adorable younger daughter. If my sister had failed at her Only Child effort, she would not accept defeat. She would behave as if I had run away from home to join the circus and she was left to accept all the compliments and kisses that were my entitlements but somehow, like with a road detour, had been routed instead to her. She flourished under all that praise, and I grew into a sour moody child with nervous rashes and school phobia. It wasn't a pretty sight.
Around age seven I began to hope she would get that dreaded incurable disease she was always whining about, but it never, ever came to pass. Instead, I think she flipped it to Tulip, my baby ginger cat. She was that powerful in her control over my needs, wishes, and desires that I wouldn't have put it past her to wish an incurable disease on the rest of the family, which by then consisted of six schnauzers and a husband from his own dysfunctional family.
I get the feeling you're going to laugh and say that despotic leadership
would never happen. No one has that kind of mystical and malevolent power, but they said that about Hitler and now they're saying that about Trump. Poor Tulip, he never had a chance.
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