The Butterfly Hours Memoir Project: SISTER

For 2019 I'm running a year-long series on my blog in which I share my responses to the writing assignment prompts found in THE BUTTERLY HOURS by Patty Dann.

I welcome you to join me, if you like! I've divided the prompts by month, and the plan is to respond to 3 (or so) a week. For some of these I may write poems, for others prose. The important thing is to mine my memory. Who knows where this exploration will lead?

For links to the prompts I've written on so far this year, please click on The Butterfly Hours tab above.

This month's prompts are sister, shoes, slippers, snow, snowstorm, soccer, soup, stairs, stamp, stepmother.

SISTER

Irene and Lynn

I've written many times about my sister Lynn. She even showed up in a poem earlier this year during ARTSPEAK: Happy! Click here to read "Sister Song."

And here is an article I wrote back in 2010 for my friend Lindsey Leavitt's blog, when she invited readers to write about "impact." Enjoy!

  So, impact.

      The word for me conjures images of meteors slamming into the earth, airplanes crashing into mountaintops, high speed trains screeching before they hit the hunk of metal that’s parked in the exact place it should not be.  Big, heart-stopping moments that change a person’s world forever.  Which is why, when I think about good impact, I instantly think of my sister.

      I have said on many, many occasions -- and even keep it posted on my website -- that one of the greatest gifts I ever got was my sister Lynn.  She was born just 17 months after I was, and I was so young that I can’t quite remember the slamming or crashing or screeching, but I am sure it happened.  Just as I’m sure that I will never be able to adequately express how grateful I am for all the ways she impacts my life.

      In childhood, she was the perfect little girl:  quiet, thoughtful, beautiful.  It was maddening at times to stand beside her and feel my own imperfections glaring bright as high beam headlights on a  rainy night.  But if there was one place I could be my own imperfect self, it was with Lynn.  She let me make the rules when we played -- when we played house, she happily took on the role of “father” when I would only be “mother.”  She let me go first.  She sat while I read to her, and sounded out words just like I instructed.  She illustrated the stories I wrote.  When we doubled up on the same horse, she let me hold the reins while she sat in back.  Whatever my dream, she accepted her role in it without argument.  And therefore she was in all of my dreams.  Still is.

      These days she’s the mom of three amazing kids and a busy pediatrician.  She sends me flowers when good things happen in my life and other times when I least expect them.  When my mother-in-law was diagnosed with cancer and we were navigating the insane ocean of chemo and hospital visits, Lynn sent me gift cards for fast food.  Whenever the kids are pelting me with unexpected challenges and I am on the verge of creeping out of my house in the middle of the night, there she miraculously is, ready to be whatever I need her to be, even if only by text or email or phone.   And since the release of LEAVING GEE’S BEND, she has bought and given away enough copies to dwarf the Empire State Building.  But that isn’t even the best part.

      The best part happened at the reading she hosted for me at Carpe Librum Bookseller in Knoxville, TN.  All her friends and patients showed up, not because of me -- because of her.  And one woman told me a story about Lynn that I’d never heard before, about how my little sister made an impact that I never knew about.

      Turns out, this woman’s son was seriously ill and was brought to the hospital where Lynn was a new resident.  The woman expressed her anger and frustration at the doctors and nurses she’d encountered, how they didn’t get what was going on with her son.  Then came Lynn, a doctor who listened.

      This woman told me that my little sister, my little Lynn, was essential in getting her son correctly diagnosed and treated.  And you know what?  Her story made my cry.  To think that the girl who has made such an unbelievable impact on my life has been out there making unbelievable impacts on others’ lives as well… the truth is, some meteors blaze with a quiet beauty and  make impacts that don’t make any of the news channels.  Thank you, Lynn, for being one of those.  I would be nothing without you.