MY GLAMOROUS SISTER and UNGLAMOROUS ME part 1

My sister, Her Imperial Majesty wanted to be glamorous. She stood endlessly in half finished dresses while Mother pinned and tucked and basted, trying to get them just exactly right for her daughter-of-royal-birth.

There would be pins sticking out like the quills of annoyed porcupines, threatening to tear the flesh off anyone who got too close. Her Imperial Majesty would walk, with extreme care, to the bathroom and then would stand in front of the full length mirror, corkscrewing, trying to see if it fit her waist tight enough. She would purse her lips in that movie star sort of way and look down her nose, practicing, I think, to snub those of less nobility. Practicing to snub me, for sure.

Her small waist was enviable, smaller than mine and I was nine years younger. Someone once told her that she was built like a Coke bottle and that made her deliriously happy. That wouldn’t be a compliment now, but then Coke bottles were nipped in at the middle. She spent a great deal of time in half finished dresses saying, “Can you just take it in a little bit more, right here?”

I thought having Mom make a dress was a big fat waste of time. She once made a dress for me out of patterned corduroy, which I might actually have liked if she hadn’t turned one piece of pattern the wrong way and the nap of the corduroy was pale. The rest of the dress had beautiful, rich autumn colors.

I wouldn’t wear it. Mother tried all sorts of persuasion.

“It looks perfectly fine,” she said.

“Mom, this whole side is a different color.”

“I don’t see it, I cut it out of the same piece of fabric. It looks EXACTLY the same to me.”

We had an endless discussion about the possibility of her being blind and me being stubborn and in the end I didn’t wear the dress.

Mom said she’s give it away to someone who appreciated her slaving over a hot sewing machine. I don’t know who that would be; perhaps the Indians who Mom was always telling me she was going to send me back to. I had seen the Indians and they wore beautiful velvet skirts and wonderful turquoise jewelry and had that blue black hair I envied so much. I knew they wouldn’t be bothered with a corduroy dress with the nap running the wrong way.

The dress was like one of those cars you see with one purple door while the rest of the car is white. They are usually driven by teen-age boys who are happy to be driving anything because their insane insurance rates are so high, or by old retired men who have no dignity left and just want to get out of the house. So, I think the dress never did find a home and it will turn up on ebay one day and it will receive no bids.

Her Imperial Majesty was the designated recipient of all of Mother’s sewing ambitions. Mom actually made her wedding dress. That was a month and a half of pure patience on Mother’s part and a month and a half of Her Imperial Majesty marathon pickiness and extreme desire to have every stitch perfect so she look like the princess she knew she was born to be.

Mom also made my bridesmaid dress, a sky blue creation and turned dark blue with the least trickle of perspiration. I had to wear dress shields so I wouldn’t look like the sweaty thirteen year old that I was.

When Puberty revved up all her interesting little hormones she gave me an extra dose of underarm glands and the only reason I survived teenager hood was because my cousin had the same runaway glands and I had someone to cry with. My cousin was all-things-beautiful and so I felt that someday the Universe would in some way compensate me for my great sweaty trial as it had her, DURING her great sweaty trial. I felt it was worth waiting for, and so I endured. I’m still waiting but when the great compensation comes I will be so happy and fulfilled.

To be continued.

THINKING OF MICE (24 years ago)

Women are supposed to sew clothes for their kids. That’s what I thought. I didn’t like to sew. I didn’t want to sew. But I was supposed to sew, especially since Aunt Dorothy had given me a sewing machine a long time ago, a sewing machine that would have been collecting dust if it weren’t tucked neatly into it’s case. In the closet. In the spare room. Behind a closed door.

I decided to make some pajamas for four-year-old Bentley. I bought seersucker fabric in a cute print—it would be cool for summer, I thought. But summer came and they still weren’t made. Bentley slept in large T-shirts. I don’t know why I didn’t think this was okay. I fretted about the pajamas all summer. Because I was supposed to sew.

Mom and Dad came up to see us in late July. “Why don’t you just get in and make them,” she said.

“I don’t know, Mom. You sew all the time. You like it. Every time I sew I end up giving the half finished, awful looking item to DI. I hate it. Why don’t you take the fabric home and make the jammies? You can give them to Bentley for his birthday.”

She thought that was a good idea and so did I. On his birthday there was a soft package wrapped with bright colored curly ribbons dripping off the top. Mom and Dad were anxiously watching him open the gift we all knew he’d love. He took the paper off and stood there. No emotion. Nothing. His eyes looked at the ceiling. I thought maybe he didn’t know what they were.

“They’re jammies,” I said.

The ceiling-looker said nothing.

I took them out of his hands, shook them out of their folded state and said, “See? Jammies,” They looked like they'd fit perfectly.

Nothing.

“Don’t you like them? Grandma made them just for you,” I said.

“I’m thinking of mice,” Bentley said in a quiet voice.

Everyone in the room leaned forward, even the kids, Trent, Taylor and Hillary. “What?” everyone said in unison.

“I’m thinking of mice.”

I looked at Mom. I could tell her feelings were a little bit hurt. “If you don’t like them I know a little boy in Annabella who would love them. Should I take them to him?”

Mother had used this tactic on me all my life. If there were something I didn’t like she threatened to give it away. It worked on me because I was probably selfish but Bentley knew what he liked and what he didn’t and he didn’t like those jammies.

“Okay,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders.

I never did find out what Mom did with the jammies. I didn’t want to remind her that her ungrateful grandson didn’t like her gift so I never mentioned them again.

“I’m thinking of mice,” has become Snyder family code for “I really don’t like this but I’m too polite to say so right to your face.” It hasn’t been used a lot, but enough. I’m thinking of mice right now, as I write this story that I really can’t do justice to.