Hope Chest

October 14, 2008

Ted and I came back Monday afternoon from Arizona. We’d been there since Thursday night, seeing my sister and her husband and son. My sister, Allyson, is recovering from two surgeries; we made dinners and played board games and video games and talked and talked.

If we’d stayed in San Diego we probably would have gone to happy hour on Friday, and then maybe hung out with some friends again on Saturday or Sunday, and caught up on the shows we’ve Tivo’d. But instead we were in Arizona– we didn’t leave the house really until Sunday for a few hours to see a high school friend of Ted’s and to drive through Tempe, AZ where I had gone to college/undergrad (ASU).

My sister needed me, and I wanted to see her. I wanted to make sure she was going to be ok. And I believe she is. Allyson is four years older than me, so growing up– especially when I was a teenager– we often felt we had nothing in common. She was so ‘adult’ to me. But I love the relationship–the friendship– we have now. We can talk about just about anything. We have husbands whom we love and who love us and care for us. We talk about books, movies, TV shows. We, amazingly, talk about politics– something we never did growing up. We both have a hope for the future with Barack Obama as our president.

When I was in Arizona this past weekend I was visited by tiny flashbacks, scenes from my life, our life together.

–I remembered being eleven or twelve and the smell of clove cigarettes coming from under Allyson’s bedroom door.

–I used to sneak into Allyson’s room to look in her Hope Chest– where she kept an old quilt handed down by my grandmother, books by VC Andrews (Flowers in the Attic, anyone?) and Playgirl magazines.

–I would sit on Allyson’s Hope Chest (after raiding it) and listen to her albums on a stereo– fascinated by Fleetwood Mac (and the highly sexualized cover for Rumors), Blondie, AC/DC.

Growing up, Allyson was such a mystery to me: she was older, wiser, worked a full-time job by the time she was seventeen, had a serious boyfriend, took care of my middle sister and me after my mother died–including the bills, the sale of our house, the insurance, social security for me, grocery shopping; she was only 20… I didn’t fathom, at the time, just how much she was doing, how much was thrust upon her at such an early age; it’s only something i’ve come to understand later.

She doesn’t see how strong she really is. How much of an inspiration she has been to me.

Here is a picture of Allyson, my best friend Bjarne, and me, Universal Studios, 1979.

We’re lifting a van.

And my sister Andrea, then Allyson, and Me (in the faux leopard print bathrobe, of course), Christmas circa 1978, and Allyson, as a child, probably about 1967 or 68.