hug_machine (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
hug_machine) wrote2009-10-16 02:19 am
hug_machine) wrote2009-10-16 02:19 am
(no subject)
Hokay.
This is a true story.
I think. I can be absolutely 110% certain it is true as I write this, but maybe that only means it's true on Thursdays. After all, truth is funny. Like, I might think veggie lasagna is absolutely disgusting and you might think it's the best thing to ever fire off your taste buds. And you can say, "ZOMG VEGGIE LASAGNA IS THE BEST EVER THING EVER EVER EVER" and I could be all "GAAAH DO NOT WANT."
And we'd both be telling the truth, right? I mean, nobody would really call either of us liars, even if we're saying two opposite statements about the exact same thing. Sometimes, truth is a matter of perspective. Or opinion.
But that's not what this is.
This a true story, (at least on Thursdays) but it starts with a lie.
"I'm serious, Cat. You probably just need to do it faster. You're too slow." I'm six years old, and my sister is twelve and I really, really, really want to believe that she knows magic. "No, not like that." I want to believe she knows magic, and that she can teach me. "More like this." Her hands flicker gracefully from one motion into the next. "This one calls the fairies, and this one the mermaids, and this gets the unicorns."
"I don't see anything!" I sit opposite her, half-pouting , half-grimacing, half-sighing (TRUFAX: MATH ISN'T MY STRONG SUIT, YOU GUYS) and wholly, thoroughly, absolutely discouraged.
"They'll come to you in your dreams." She says this like it's totally obvious. She says it like I'm six years old and clueless. Which I am, but. Pretty sure I'd know a unicorn if I saw one. "They take you to Neverland." She takes a sip of her Sprite and pulls out a powder-blue colored pencil, and starts coloring the Indian Ocean. Sixth-grade geography homework is pretty important business, you know
"Neverland? Like Peter Pan--"
"Fairyworld, whatever. I never asked." She's carefully tracing around Sri Lanka, which she already colored a flashy hot pink. "It's just really cool. Keep practicing."
So I did. For hours and days and weeks and months and years and centuries and --- OK, OK, I WAS SIX: eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a glass of milk felt like an eon.
I get pretty good at it, eventually, speeding through the whole incantation or spell or whatever it was supposed to be in under a minute,
My sister is impressed.
The unicorns and mermaids? Not so much.
I never made it quite to Fairyworld or Neverland. I'm pretty sure I never even made it past the Mildly Awesome City limits. For nearly a month, I looked for glitter on my pillow in the morning. I'd squeeze my eyes shut and try to remember my dreams. Usually they involved training my kitten to speak and wear tutus. Or my mom and dad turning into dolphins (this was a scary dream) and swimming away to the sparkling, powder-blue bays of Sri Lanka. But never the things my sister promised, never the fantastic places or the magical creatures.
So I forgot about it. Except not. You know how you forget to buy orange juice at the grocery, but somehow still remember how to write your name in cursive, even if you've not done it since fourth grade? Or when something you think you'd utterly forgotten pops up in your mind, years and years and years later? Like the deliciously-buttery crunch of those amazing blueberry waffles you had for breakfast on June 23, 1991?
It was something like that.
When I was in high school, a family moved into a place two houses down from ours. They had a eight year old daughter named Rachel. Being one of two neighborhood babysitters, I made sure to introduce myself to the family the first time I saw them at church. I clinched a babysitting contract within weeks.
Rachel was almost entirely deaf. She used a hearing aid in one ear, but from what I could tell it didn't do much for her? My mother said to write things down when I wanted to communicate. Rachel would do the same. She was used to talking with hearing people like this, I guess. We didn't talk much, but we had fun. We'd play Operation or Sorry! or Playstation (ZOMG, this girl was a PRODIGY at Crash Bandicoot 2, SERIOUSLY).
One evening, after Rachel had gone to bed, I finish my book and snoop through their library for something else to read.
And I don't actually remember the title, or who it was by, or even the color of the cover.
But I knew it. It was like riding a bike, or cursive, or amazing blueberry waffles from 1991. My sister told me it'd let me ride unicorns in my dreams.
I follow along with the book...forming my hands into the shapes of the ASL alphabet. A, B, C, D...
I'm a slow speller, even more so in sign lanaguage. But I do my best to memorize what I can, practicing in my makeup mirror before my next babysitting gig.
"H-E-L-L-O R-A-C-H-E-L."
Rachel's eyes go bright and crinkly and smileful, and she bursts into a spree of ASL, none of which I actually manage to understand. Still, it's the last time we use paper and pencil. I'm slow and awkward and she's patient and clever. And at eight, she spells about a thousand times better than me, for realzies.
I babysit her for the rest of her babysitt'd years, and learn about three dozen other signs. If you ever need to say "MY BLUE RABBIT IS BURNT!", in ASL, I'm totally your girl. I still see Rachel whenever I'm home, and it's crazy and awesome and disorientating --the way kids grow up and turn into teenagers.
It never brought me to Fairyworld. It never took me swimming with mermaids, or flying with fairies. I still have no idea why my sister taught me ASL, or why she told me it was magic. Possibly doing her big sister duty to confuse the heck out of her lil sister.
But it taught me something pretty amazing about truth. The real truth not always what or where or even when you expect it to be.
Weird and wise and wonderful. Anything but empty gestures.
This is a true story.
I think. I can be absolutely 110% certain it is true as I write this, but maybe that only means it's true on Thursdays. After all, truth is funny. Like, I might think veggie lasagna is absolutely disgusting and you might think it's the best thing to ever fire off your taste buds. And you can say, "ZOMG VEGGIE LASAGNA IS THE BEST EVER THING EVER EVER EVER" and I could be all "GAAAH DO NOT WANT."
And we'd both be telling the truth, right? I mean, nobody would really call either of us liars, even if we're saying two opposite statements about the exact same thing. Sometimes, truth is a matter of perspective. Or opinion.
But that's not what this is.
This a true story, (at least on Thursdays) but it starts with a lie.
"I'm serious, Cat. You probably just need to do it faster. You're too slow." I'm six years old, and my sister is twelve and I really, really, really want to believe that she knows magic. "No, not like that." I want to believe she knows magic, and that she can teach me. "More like this." Her hands flicker gracefully from one motion into the next. "This one calls the fairies, and this one the mermaids, and this gets the unicorns."
"I don't see anything!" I sit opposite her, half-pouting , half-grimacing, half-sighing (TRUFAX: MATH ISN'T MY STRONG SUIT, YOU GUYS) and wholly, thoroughly, absolutely discouraged.
"They'll come to you in your dreams." She says this like it's totally obvious. She says it like I'm six years old and clueless. Which I am, but. Pretty sure I'd know a unicorn if I saw one. "They take you to Neverland." She takes a sip of her Sprite and pulls out a powder-blue colored pencil, and starts coloring the Indian Ocean. Sixth-grade geography homework is pretty important business, you know
"Neverland? Like Peter Pan--"
"Fairyworld, whatever. I never asked." She's carefully tracing around Sri Lanka, which she already colored a flashy hot pink. "It's just really cool. Keep practicing."
So I did. For hours and days and weeks and months and years and centuries and --- OK, OK, I WAS SIX: eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a glass of milk felt like an eon.
I get pretty good at it, eventually, speeding through the whole incantation or spell or whatever it was supposed to be in under a minute,
My sister is impressed.
The unicorns and mermaids? Not so much.
I never made it quite to Fairyworld or Neverland. I'm pretty sure I never even made it past the Mildly Awesome City limits. For nearly a month, I looked for glitter on my pillow in the morning. I'd squeeze my eyes shut and try to remember my dreams. Usually they involved training my kitten to speak and wear tutus. Or my mom and dad turning into dolphins (this was a scary dream) and swimming away to the sparkling, powder-blue bays of Sri Lanka. But never the things my sister promised, never the fantastic places or the magical creatures.
So I forgot about it. Except not. You know how you forget to buy orange juice at the grocery, but somehow still remember how to write your name in cursive, even if you've not done it since fourth grade? Or when something you think you'd utterly forgotten pops up in your mind, years and years and years later? Like the deliciously-buttery crunch of those amazing blueberry waffles you had for breakfast on June 23, 1991?
It was something like that.
When I was in high school, a family moved into a place two houses down from ours. They had a eight year old daughter named Rachel. Being one of two neighborhood babysitters, I made sure to introduce myself to the family the first time I saw them at church. I clinched a babysitting contract within weeks.
Rachel was almost entirely deaf. She used a hearing aid in one ear, but from what I could tell it didn't do much for her? My mother said to write things down when I wanted to communicate. Rachel would do the same. She was used to talking with hearing people like this, I guess. We didn't talk much, but we had fun. We'd play Operation or Sorry! or Playstation (ZOMG, this girl was a PRODIGY at Crash Bandicoot 2, SERIOUSLY).
One evening, after Rachel had gone to bed, I finish my book and snoop through their library for something else to read.
And I don't actually remember the title, or who it was by, or even the color of the cover.
But I knew it. It was like riding a bike, or cursive, or amazing blueberry waffles from 1991. My sister told me it'd let me ride unicorns in my dreams.
I follow along with the book...forming my hands into the shapes of the ASL alphabet. A, B, C, D...
I'm a slow speller, even more so in sign lanaguage. But I do my best to memorize what I can, practicing in my makeup mirror before my next babysitting gig.
"H-E-L-L-O R-A-C-H-E-L."
Rachel's eyes go bright and crinkly and smileful, and she bursts into a spree of ASL, none of which I actually manage to understand. Still, it's the last time we use paper and pencil. I'm slow and awkward and she's patient and clever. And at eight, she spells about a thousand times better than me, for realzies.
I babysit her for the rest of her babysitt'd years, and learn about three dozen other signs. If you ever need to say "MY BLUE RABBIT IS BURNT!", in ASL, I'm totally your girl. I still see Rachel whenever I'm home, and it's crazy and awesome and disorientating --the way kids grow up and turn into teenagers.
It never brought me to Fairyworld. It never took me swimming with mermaids, or flying with fairies. I still have no idea why my sister taught me ASL, or why she told me it was magic. Possibly doing her big sister duty to confuse the heck out of her lil sister.
But it taught me something pretty amazing about truth. The real truth not always what or where or even when you expect it to be.
Weird and wise and wonderful. Anything but empty gestures.
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