I told my students that they can think outside the box about who to pick to write their mentor papers about. I was thinking about how Steve Harrington in Stranger Things is such a great mentor to Dustin, and how I would encourage Dustin to write about Steve if he were taking my class.
People don’t often think of their younger siblings as mentors, but I sure have learned a lot from my sister. This is just the first draft with more to come later.
The Circle of Life
A small girl peeked over the covers of her blue quilt, reciting her bedtime prayers in a sing-song voice. “Keep us safe until morning light. Ahhhhhh-men.” She made the sign of the cross over and over her chest as she continued, “God bless Diamond and keep her safe and keep her warm.” She said that same prayer every night since our cat, Diamond, disappeared. Diamond, the sweetest tempered cat you could imagine, was the Mother of our kittens. Instead of hiding away to give birth, she had them right on the family couch, which we took as one more sign of her trusting and loving nature. We were her family and she was ours. We would kiss her right on the black tabby cat “M” on her forehead. We never found Diamond, but Gina also never stopped hoping for the best. Maybe even today, Gina imagines Diamond out chasing mice and locusts in the forsythia bushes and leaving the hearts of tiny ghost birds on the back porch as gifts.
Later, when her little white mouse, Frisky, passed away, Gina displayed similar tenderness. Gina acquired Frisky from her first grade classroom at the end of the year, much to our Mother’s annoyance, but by the time Frisky passed away, he had won us all over. Gina insisted that Frisky get a full burial service. We laid him in a shoebox coffin, with soft tissues lining the inside. We dug a hole under the knotted, burly crab apple tree. Gina hugged Dad’s leg, and cried, mournfully, “Here lies Frisky. He drank a lot of whisky.” I had to repress a giggle, despite my compassion for my sister’s loss. That innocently solemn epitaph also appeared on his tiny popsicle tombstone. Sometimes I would stand under the trees on the side of our yard, wondering whether Frisky was a skeleton yet. I’m surprised Gina never dug him up to see. Maybe she did. She’s not squeamish or dainty in her ways, and is endlessly fascinated with the circle of life.
Gina, who would crash through the neighborhood with fearless freedom during childhood, would often come home with treasures bulging from the pockets of her pink princess gowns: bugs, rocks, pinecones, hunks of dirt, bits of bones. She found a squirrel tail once. After chasing me around the yard trying to force me to look at it, she gave up and started to bring it inside to add to her collection. Gina stood at the front door, holding the squirrel tale, facing Mom who was blocking her from coming any further into the house.
“It’s not like it’s alive anymore, Mom,” she argued.
“That’s the point, Gina. It’s a dirty, dead squirrel tail that has been rotting in the street for who knows how long.”
“Well, how about I just keep it outside?”
I can’t remember what happened to the squirrel tail, but Gina had many other similar treasures that did end up inside. In fact, it wasn’t long after the squirrel incident when Gina acquired her alligator purse. She saw its reptilian head protruding from a dark corner at the top of a high, dusty shelf in the antique mall. “What is that? Can I have it? Will you buy it for me? Please!?” she said, jumping up and down. Were her hands even trembling?
My Uncle Robert, who had a stall at the antique mall, got the purse down so we could look at it more carefully. The purse was an amalgamation of mundane straps and clasps, with disconcerting toes and teeth poking out of the scaly surface. Its plastic eyes made it seem as though it were still alive and watching me, grinning with that devious alligator smile. Gina had never seen anything so magical and mysterious in all her life and immediately knew she had to have it. Somehow, against all odds, she came home with that alligator purse. All these years later, I have still never touched it.
Over the years, Gina’s collection of live pets and dead pets has grown. She and Jon have a menagerie of cats, two tanks filled with fish (one outside, one inside), and what it probably the most spoiled dog on the planet. Zeb, the Boston terrier, is more child than animal. Her house and yard brims with eclectic plant life: wild onions with their Seuss-like flowers, strawberries that produce ghostly white fruit, herbs whose aromas cling to your clothes after your pass through them. When the winter comes, she brings her tropical plants inside, and her house becomes a jungle. She also has bison and deer skulls, turtle shells and skeletons, bones of all kinds, fossils and furs, and numerous display cases filled with colorful, iridescent butterflies and other bugs. Her collection ranges from the rare to the commonplace. All of it is treasured.
Recently, Gina confided in me, saying, “I watched Harry and the Hendersons again. That scene when Harry gets upset about all the taxidermied animals made me feel a little bad about my bones and stuff.”
“Was it bad enough to get rid of it?”
“Well, no,” she replied, looking around her home, brimming with the circle of life. “I guess I can justify it because I don’t go out and purposefully kill mine. They were dead already. I just found them and gave them a home.”
“Well, that’s a relief, because if you aren’t going to be the one buying my kids fox tails and encouraging them to try eating crickets, they’ll never get to have those experiences; as much as I have tried, I am much too cowardly. My kids need you for their scientific education.”
And, although I didn’t say this, I thought, “I need you to still be you. My magical sister. My kids’ magical aunt.”
Bonus: The Naming
(Because I couldn’t fit this anywhere, but I still love it…)
When my Mom was pregnant with Gina, we went on a trip to Silverdollar City in Branson, MO, where we heard John Corbin play the hammer dulcimer. He was playing outside, somewhere on the path between “Fire in the Hole” and “The American Plunge.” He was dressed in olden-timey Appalachian clothes. The air was thick with moisture and the aroma of barbeque. The sky was a hazy gray. Birds were chirping in the small trees above us, where we sat on a concrete bench. The dulcimer jangled along, competing with the voices of the passing crowd, who gawked briefly before continuing on to the Old-Time Photography booth. Meanwhile, I danced on the sidewalk and my Mom and Dad and I fell in love with one particular song. It was called, “Regina.”
Taking My Own Freshman Composition Class 