Sister? Miss her.
Fuck cancer.
The photo above is the only one I’ve found of my sister Joanie and I. I’m six, she’s two years older. When it was taken, why it was taken, confounds me. Usually, all five of us would be posed together, oldest-to-youngest. This picture’s a bit of a unicorn.
The NIHILISTIC writing I’m doing has me attempting to conjure Joanie and the rest of my family but the glimpses are fleeting, dwindling each year. A photo can help but despite my mother’s Kodak Brownie and Aunt Isabel’s Stereo Realist there are scant snapshots depicting everyday life. Birthdays, holidays, special occasions, vacations: that’s when cameras were hauled out. Sometimes the family photographers would snap a few candids to test a new film or camera but mostly they’d want you to freeze, stare into the lens, say “Cheese!” on command.
Years back, after digitizing my father’s Super 8 films, I searched for the mundane among the ten minutes of surviving footage as though sifting for clues at a crime scene. Dad’s awkward movie rig with its heavy, hot lamps meant it was employed sparingly indoors. What’s survived is twenty seconds of a long-ago Christmas, several minutes of an upstate vacation (Catskills? Adirondacks?) and brother Mario’s post-confirmation backyard gathering. That’s it. I’m not complaining. Those born post-iPhone have their entire lives documented but will they ever go back and sift through several terabytes of photos and video? Or are my scant artifacts the more precious due to their rarity?
Joanie (to differentiate her from her namesake, our mother) was the middle child of five. I never asked my sister what it was like but if I search “Middle Child Syndrome” I suspect I’ll find something by Alfred Adler about “facilitator” or “mediator” or “diplomat.” The one who feels invisible, overlooked, whose system is tuned too high by the stress of seeing everything, who tries to keep calm by keeping the peace, who wants everyone to get along even as they’re at each other’s throats, fighting over anything and nothing.
Being in the middle, Joanie came in for it from all sides. Quickest to get her feelings hurt and stalk off in tears, her unspoken question – Do I matter enough to be coaxed back? – was answered with a sing-song “Knock-kneed and pigeon-toed!”
After the five of us had gone our separate ways, several of us might be beefing but Joanie remained above the fray. Lone among us, she even reconciled with our dad in time to attend his third wedding. When I thought of reestablishing contact with the father I knew to be either disappointed, disengaged or enraged – and who staged discipline (“Here, kids, watch as I pull your brother’s pants down and spank him with my belt!”) like it was Corporal Punishment Theater – I called Joanie for direction. She understood why others might no longer be on speaking terms with Mr. My-Way-Or-The-Highway but told me we only had one dad and she wanted him in her life. My reconciliation with our father didn’t go so well but I’m glad Joanie persuaded me to try. The last time our entire family was gathered (sans dad) it was at Joanie’s house. She’d begun treatment for lung cancer and we made the trek to Connecticut for Christmas.
Joanie died February 8th, 2006. She was 47. It’s been twenty years and I still wish I could’ve told her Yes, you matter enough to be coaxed back.