The Evils of Count Ragula

"Swirling" and "eddying" are two things that mist does rather well in vampire tales. When mist is swirling or eddying, it always seems concrete, as if you could pick it up and carry it or play with it. "That Woman" of the vampire flicks, who in the persona of my sister will be called "Mary Siss" (for the presupposed virginal state of such women), always wanders around outside the manor/castle/estate in the moonlight, eyes glazed over with desire for The Vampire and mist swirling and eddying around the hem of her night attire. Mary Siss, of course, would be wandering around in the green dress, having borrowed it from the relative who would later stake her through the heart. That would be me.

Just what would Mary Siss be doing there at all hours of the night? Trying to resist being among the living, of course. She is afraid of the living, the truly living, and prefers to retreat into a little world which she can invent as she goes along and label as "normal". This little world is ruled by The Evil Count Ragula.

In this little world, no one has to interact with a partner or sig oth on a daily basis. Each can safely retreat to his/her own coffin with the coming dawn, thus avoiding both responsibility and true intimacy. How convenient for Mary Siss and Count Ragula.

It has not always been this way for Mary Siss. Before she fell under the spell of the Evil Count Ragula, Mary Siss borrowed the green dress for happy things like dinner and dancing. Her partners may not have been permanent or even lasting, but at least they came out in the daytime! After the advent of Count Ragula, the green dress hung sadly in full view on Mary Siss' upper landing, waiting for her moment of inspiration to write about its history. Regrettably, it only got worn in the swirling mists of her mind....and that was in the dark. I rescued the green dress when I drove the stake through Mary Siss' heart (see the letter in an earlier post) and now I am the one doing the writing.

How did this happen? How did the Evil Count Ragula insinuate himself into the life of the practical and pragmatic Mary Siss the Nurse and turn her into his creature of the night? Here are some of the things I have come up with (excuse the dangling participle):

1. He is a loner, and a brooding loner at that. If Mary Siss wanted to be with him, it had to be with only him, and so he slowly excluded all others from her life. The exceptions to this would be the casual relationships that were kept around to give an appearance of normalcy ("This is my friend with whom I do a once-a-year spa weekend").

2. He is strange and not socialized. This fits right in with the exclusionary thing. Mary Siss had to keep him away from mortals like me and Sig, because too much exposure meant that we would surely see him for what he is....too late for that one!

3. He is grasping and clinging and constructs a web just like a spider. The Evil Count Ragula married Mary Siss and then cast her out, but he never did consent to a divorce. They are still "married", which means that she cannot legally be with another. This is really getting Gothic.

4. Here's the kicker. Mary Siss seems to accept this state of things and actually enjoy it! Evidence is that she has been free to go out and file for a divorce at any time and has yet to do so after more than ten years of the "arrangement". You may read this as just another excuse for her not to get on with life, and mark the page "clutching the chains that bind".

5. He is deeply involved in Orgonomy, which involvement Mary Siss can drag out at any time to prove how healthy and normal he is. Well, I, the relative with the stake, am also involved in Orgonomy, and I can tell you that I have met many very unhealthy people who are similarly involved and are attracted there for the appearance of health.

So....it looks like The Evil Count Ragula is firmly entrenched in Mary Siss' "life", and I will have to stay away from the undead for my own sanity. At least I managed to rescue the green dress. No more swirling and eddying mists. It is living in the real world once again.

Siss Gets Her Neck Bitten....But Good

So, why do I see Siss as the "Damsel in Distress" who never gets rescued (see previous post)? Well, this occurred to me even before I thought of the vampire spin on "The Green Dress Diaries". Siss is a natural damsel in distress, especially the "distress" part. Outwardly brisk and competent in her everyday persona of "Super Nurse", she is actually needy, self-serving, clinging, and quite childlike. These qualities are perfect for her to slip into the role of "that woman" in the early vampire flicks.

"That Woman" is a weak sister as far as I am concerned. She always falls prey to the Vampire's come-hither, and takes to her bed for several days of feverish muttering and declining strength. The Vampire visits her nightly to feed on both her blood and her wits, and by the end of the third night (or so), she dies, is encrypted (so to speak) and rises again as a vampire version of her former self. The downside of this is that she is always staked through the heart by well-meaning relatives who want her to "rest in peace".

Siss fell for The Wet Rag, as she fell for others before him, because she was needy of a partner. At the same time, he was needy of the look of being a normal person. Ha! I think that he always knew he was not a suitable candidate for spending life with someone else; he is too much of a brooding loner, just like a vampire. Siss was his energetic victim, and she went willingly to the slaughter, just like "That Woman". She kept coming back for more until he bled her absolutely dry and then kicked her to the curb because he "needed to be alone"...."had never loved her"...."it was not ever a marriage". Consider Siss dead and in her crypt.

Now look at what happened next. Siss rose from the crypt when he moved in next door to her, and she does his bidding, acts like his best friend, gives him the cover of normalcy, and has no other life save for The Wet Rag Vampire.

I guess this would leave me to play the well-meaning relative who stakes her through the heart so that she can rest in peace. The "stake" would be the final letter I sent (see earlier chapters). You see, just like "The Emperor's New Clothes", Siss never saw what she really looked like, didn't want to see what she really looked like, and wanted everyone else to go along with her little charade of emotional health. I forced her to look, and it was like a stake through her heart.

Will Siss rest in peace? I don't think so.
Has she seen the last of The Wet Rag Vampire? Not by a long shot.
Will she ever try to contact me again? Too late; she lives in another world now.

This is all a nice narrative, but it needs to be fleshed out with imagery, and the characters given names. Next chapter...."The Evils of Count Ragula".

The Green Dress Vampires

One would have to be blind and deaf not to notice the reading and viewing public's fixation on vampires. With a short pause for breath, this has been true since Anne Rice first published Interview With The Vampire (help me out with the year here). I really enjoyed that book, and it translated quite well to the screen. I also enjoyed the second book, The Vampire Lestat, and then the series went into a downward spiral of increasingly implausible material. None of these went to the screen. However, after the pause for breath, the teens and "tweens" got on the vampire bandwagon, as did the small-screen audience, and off we went. Vampires are now once again the top draw with the "Twilight" series on the big screen, where chicken-chested adolescent boy vampires take their shirts off to the squeal of millions of young girls, and on the small screen, with programs like "True Blood", which I must confess I have never seen.

Be it known here that Count Dracula, in his many iterations, never once took his shirt off. In fact, he wore that high-collared cape so much that we rarely got to even see the shirt.

Anyway, I digress. What I am getting at is that it occurred to me that if I ever want to turn "The Green Dress Diaries" into anything that will sell, I might do well to put a vampire slant on it and call it "The Green Dress Vampires". The green dress would lend itself beautifully to a running-around-in-the-mist scene, like you always see outside the castle or the mansion or the mausoleum in vampire movies. It would even look great on one of those Fabio-type paperback covers that people read on the beach.

what really made me think of the cast of "The Green Dress Diaries" as vampires is the fact that The Wet Rag is the most perfect vampire ever. Here are several things to support this:

1. He seems to turn up out of nowhere, as if he can just dissolve into mist and flow through walls. Every single time I have visited Siss, he has materialized within minutes, ready to join the group

2. He is brooding and silent. What a creep!! I can never figure out why he joins us or whether or not he really wants to be there. Like Count Dracula, maybe he is just there to watch our necks for future reference. Whatever his purpose, he always just sits there like a stone, contributing nothing. When he does say something, everyone jumps a mile.

3. He often leaves the group and goes off by himself for long periods of "alone time". He either goes home (his coffin is probably upstairs there) or wanders off as he did at our picnic. Siss says that he goes running by himself for long distances. This is strange, because he does not look like he is in any kind of shape, and even has rounded shoulders and a sort of hunched back. Not exactly a hump, but like the beginnings of osteoporosis.

4. He is an energy leech, who descends on the group like a black hole and sucks everyone dry of energy. You know the type. Without saying a word, he brings the group to its energetic knees, and dominates the conversation with his silence.

So, The Wet Rag would be the vampire of mystery, the heavy, creepy element, the base around whom the story line(s) would be built. You see that I have left room for a sequel or sequels. They always beat these things to a pulp before they bury the series. Casting The Wet Rag is a brilliant idea. No one would initially suspect him to be a vampire. He is sort of short and puny and stringy, with a bald spot on the back of his head. He has a perpetual stoop and kind of a sunken chest. I realize that I am describing more of a Quasimodo than someone with the charisma of Dracula or Lestat, but disguise would be the beauty of his entire persona. I am really at a loss to remember how he dresses or anything I have ever seen him wearing, but the color gray seems to leap to my mind. Gray T-shirts? Gray running shoes? Maybe it's just that The Rag is so lacking in color. He has a black-and-white persona. Just as Pigpen in the "Peanuts" comic strip walked around with a cloud of dust and dirt around him, The Rag is always surrounded by a gray fog. This is a great vampire thing; colorless, joyless, devoid of life.

Now we are getting somewhere!!

Next installment....Siss as the damsel in distress who does NOT get rescued but gets her neck bitten but good by The Rag Vampire and turns into a vampire herself.

Siss, The Blue Coat, and a Near-Death Experience

Siss and I, although only three years apart in age, have often been oceans apart in experience and social skills. Just think of thirteen and sixteen. There you have it. At the time of The Episode of the Blue Coat, Siss and I were, respectively fourteen and seventeen or fifteen and eighteen. I was a freshman in high school and she was a senior, and we both changed ages in the second semester. Sue me.

I have already mentioned the "Hill Section" of Scranton, and I by no means exaggerated the incline of those hills. They were steep, man. We ( Cella, Siss, and I) lived at the very bottom of the hills, on a street called Jefferson Avenue. Almost every old town has streets named after various presidents and statesmen, and Scranton was quite creative about mixing them up. On the way up the hill, there were, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Quincy, Clay, Webster, Taylor, Irving, Prescott, Harrison,Wheeler, Colfax, Arthur, and then Nay Aug Park, where the large man-made lake was called Lake Lincoln. Scranton never wanted you to forget about the presidents, but the city felt free to throw in other dudes like Irving, for those of a literary bent.

I can remember one Christmas Eve when Cella and I left our little apartment looking for a Christmas tree. We had almost no money, so we had to wait until Christmas Eve, when all the trees had been picked over and the remaining rejects were on sale for next-to-nothing, or free. Since we lived at the bottom of the Hill Section, there was no place to look but up, so up we climbed, in a steadily worsening snowfall. Almost at the top of the hills, and well after dark, we came upon a tree lot that was closing but still had some trees left. I think the man felt sorry for us because we were on foot, so he gave us a cute little Douglas Fir, which Cella at once named "Doug", for free.

We were happy as we began the descent, for we had saved the five dollars that we had earmarked for the tree, for extra Christmas nuts or candy. Almost as soon as we started being happy, disaster set in. The wind picked up, and the snowfall became a veritable blizzard, forcing us to crouch and slide on the ice-covered slate sidewalks. Finally, the ever-resourceful Cella pointed Doug's little stem downhill, told me to take a seat, and climbed aboard the tree behind me. We rode home in some modicum of style. This is what I remember the most; when we arrived at the warm apartment and dragged "Doug" inside, there were all the lights and ornaments and icicles and tinsel and popcorn balls and gingerbread men, laid out and waiting for us to decorate. The tree stand was in the middle of the tiny living room. All this had been there when we left, but I never stopped to think then that Cella had no money....but she always had hope and optimism. The smallest things in life were always a cause for celebration for her. This is the thing that I hope I inherited from Cella.

I have not gotten to the story of The Blue Coat yet, but I hope that the Christmas Tree schtick has given some idea of how steep and treacherous the Hill Section can be. That is important to this part of the story. On the day in question, Siss had gone up the hill to see her best friend Jill, with whom she sang in a Peter-Paul-and-Mary type folk group. They had, besides themselves, a boy who played guitar and a boy who played double bass. Siss and Jill had bought matching outfits for performance; mohair suits with straght skirts and little vests. Siss' was blue and Jill wore yellow. The group billed itself as "The Singletons".

It was cold and raw and wet that day, so Siss borrowed the only garment that I owned that I truly cared for; my slate-blue, wide-wale corduroy car-coat. It sported a hood which was trimmed with red fox fur, and had wooden beer-barrel buttons that closed on loops down the front. She was my big sister. I was proud that I owned something that she deemed worthy.

I stayed home that day. The weather made me want to read and talk on the 'phone. It was growing dark, and Siss still hadn't showed up, so Cella called Jill's house and found out that Siss had left there several hours before. Cella was frantic. She called Jack, from whom she had (thank Heaven) separated, and he got in his car and started for our place. Before he got there, the door burst open and a distraught and dripping Siss came in. Here is what happened to her, and by association, my Blue Coat:

Siss was walking home from Jill's house, being careful to avoid the large puddles that were accumulating from the heavy rain.When it rained, the water started at the top of the hills, gathering momentum and volume as it flowed down under the streets. On this particular evening, the rain had been so heavy that it rushed down and popped the manhole cover off at one of the corners where Siss had to cross. She stepped off the curb, through the water, and fell into the manhole.

The rushing water grabbed her legs and pulled them underneath the street. She thrust her arms out over the lip of the hole and struggled to kick herself free. My coat became sodden, and was so heavy that it kept her down. She could not even release an arm long enough to take the coat off.

There she stayed for a very long time. We still do not know how she finally mamaged to get out of the hole and avoid being sucked into oblivion underneath the streets of Scranton. Siss does not remember this herself. All she remembers is bursting in through the door of home and collapsing on Cella. Jack came in shortly thereafter, and took Siss out with him after she has gotten into some dry clothes. This part never made any sense to me, but Jack took Siss to one of his neighborhood Irish bars, either Joyce's or Judge's, and bought her a glass of wine. First, what kind of an Irish bar serves wine? Second, an Irish bar probably serves the kind of wine that would take the paint off your car. Third, why on earth take a traumatized teenager to a bar to have a drink? Siss got the glass of wine in her hand, and squeezed it so hard that it shattered.

I hope that I did not take after Jack in this respect.

More About The Green Dress

I am still trying to figure out exactly when Siss wheedled the green dress out of me, and I just know that I have gotten it all wrong. Time has seemed to compress in the almost-ten-years that I have lived in Houston, and I have molded it into a little ball that I can throw out in conversation as a neat package. Actually, it hasn't been like that at all.

When I think about all this time in a non-anecdotal way, there are events that stand out like blazes on trees to mark my way in time. Cella died in June and I came here in August, leaving Scranton directly from her memorial service. That first academic year, August-May, Siss came along with me and ten of my students to the American College Dance Festival, which was held at the University of Texas at Austin. Siss came as our "nurse", so she got a free ride. She watched me teach some master classes, and we went to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Garden. This was in March.

I saw Siss again the next November, which would have been my second academic year here. She came for Thanksgiving, which I had prepared to cook for us both. Naturally, Mr. Stupid-and-Cheap had provided me with a wreck of a refrigerator, which died just in time to spoil all the food for my big dinner. This is why Siss and I ended up at Kim Son, my neighborhood Vietnamese/Chinese restaurant, for dinner. I had house soup, a duck salad, and several glasses of appalling red wine. Who cared? We had the good stuff back at my place, a mere two blocks away. It was a good Thanksgiving Day.

Also on that weekend, Siss and I went to the Butterfly Garden at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. We took photographs there, among the fluttering wings, and I have not thought of those photographs until now. Perhaps I should dig around for them and post one....if they really do exist.

Here is the other thing I remember about that weekend....or was it the Spring Break weekend? Siss was shocked that I did not own a television, so she took me out and bought me this little, 13-inch TV/VCR combo that I subsequently used only too look at movies and dance videos from performances. I had this little TV/VCR until just two Christmases ago when Sig bought me a large-screen TV and a satellite subscription. I still use it mainly to watch movies. You can't teach an old dog new tricks.

That was also the year that Jack, my father, died at Christmas and I missed the funeral because I was snowed in by a blizzard in Flagstaff, Arizona....another story entirely.

In the middle of the third year, Siss suggested that we get together and visit Scranton in order to look at our parents' grave. Yes, they were buried in the same grave, although they had been divorced since I was fourteen. And, how do you get two people into the same grave, you ask? Cella was a Lutheran and Jack was a Catholic. Cella wanted cremation and Jack wanted a big Irish wake. Cella and Jack wanted to be buried together. Therefore, when Cella died, her ashes were stored at the mortuary in their little cherry wood box until Jack died. Then, the box was slipped into his coffin with his hand resting on it, probably in an effort to keep her quiet for eternity. No one said a word about this arrangement, because the church charged an "extra body fee" for more than one person in a grave. Ghoulish.

So, during the third academic year, Siss and I went to Scranton, visited the grave, and....I got my navel pierced. These things have absolutely nothing to do with each other. There is just a dearth of things to do in Scranton. We probably went to Brenda's, too, because we never go to Scranton without sampling the Italian fare and potent Manhattans at Bistocchi's.

A year later, at the end of my fourth academic year, I met Sig. Sig never even knew about the green dress until I asked for it back. I asked for it back when I was going on sabbatical. You can't get a sabbatical until you have been at the college for seven years.

What does this all mean? I mean, what is the point? The point is that Siss had possession of my green dress without writing a word for much longer than I had thought. It was on the grave-visiting, navel-piercing trip that she asked to borrow the dress; and it was after my seventh academic year that I finally asked for it back.

Having thought in terms of "academic years" for far too long, I have decided that I am finished with higher education forever. Dancing for grades never made a whole lot of sense anyway.

I did get the time line settled.

"It Wouldn't Be Me"

Okay...that was the big line emanating from my sister's electronic lips (she always does both her dirty work and her making up over the 'phone or the e-mail) on the night that I finally had had enough of her BS and hung up on her. What a feeling!

This was before the big birthday blowup and final parting. In fact, this was the incident that gave me the two-plus years of peace and quiet before her "you're the only sister I have" speech. I really enjoyed those two-plus years. Why don't I ever remember these things in a timely fashion when she wants to reconnect and "bond"??

At this point in time, I was still in possession of the green dress. It was wadded up and shoved in a trunk, having been last used as a costume for a solo that I set on a particularly gifted student. This girl could really dance, and she was intellectually interesting as well, and a thoughtful choreographer. I set this short work, an introspective solo to Philip Glass' "Freezing", for an annual college event called "Rising Stars". We, as faculty, nominated these students and showcased their talents at a really decent dinner held at a hotel ballroom every May. I went for the food, and I was always sure that the nominated student or students would show up for the same reason. I remember that the dinner was one of those clever, molded turkey breast slices that was formed around a mound of stuffing and framed in festoons of french-cut green beans. Okay, it was predictable, but the dessert was frosted with real ganache and had chocolate-covered strawberries on the side. This was the lure. The student, who will remain nameless for her own sake and my legal safety, showed up, danced, and chowed down on the dinner. This is the selfsame student that I once saw devour five slices of a very dense pizza and then go out and perform. All this to say that I did, indeed, have the green dress.

On to the hang-up incident. I have already mentioned that I live in a warehouse space. What I have not yet mentioned is that the entire warehouse is owned by probably the "stupidest" and cheapest man in the world....at least, in my world. After I had lived in the space for a year, I came home one day to find a notice to vacate posted on my door by the City of Houston. The notice gave me one week to get out. You see, Mr. stupid-and-cheap didn't feel that he had to be up to code because he rented us the spaces on fake rental agreements. This is the same man who once admonished me to "talk to me in words I can understand". You get the drift.

What I am trying to say is that the warehouse leaked like a sieve and had PVC pipes that were totally inadequate for the amount of water that flowed through them. Recipe for disaster, and disaster came more often than I would like to remember. On this occasion, a particularly heavy rain came in a matter of minutes, and fell on ground that was very dry and not ready to absorb. I ended up with more than three feet of water in my place. I lost almost everything, including art, clothing, furniture, books papers....the list goes on and on. It was so bad that one of my friends at work gave me a few items of clothing so that I could go to school and teach my classes. Naturally, Mr. stupid-and-cheap never paid a cent to any of us poor slobs who were his tenants.

As I was still digging out from the three feet of silt, water, and happy frogs, Siss called me, wanting to chat. For whatever reason, she wanted the conversation to be all about her, and I wasn't in the mood for her petty bitching. I told her nicely that I was having a difficult time, just having lost everything. I hadn't asked her for a thing, and didn't intend to. I just didn't need to be an ear for her just then.

She turned on me, not in anger, but in cold moralistic tones, which I find much worse. She delivered her line, "It wouldn't be me living that way"....this, just after she was braying on about how she always wanted to live in a warehouse.

In a moment of weakness (or strength),I said "get out of my life, and stay out", and hung up.

There. Now I have connected the dots to the "you're the only sister I have" speech. Siss let more than two years go by after I hung up in her ear, probably hoping that I would forget all about her bad timing and moralistic attitude, and then she contacted me by e-mail. I took her back in without a word about the past. What an idiot. Somewhere between that 'phone call, that e-mail, and the birthday debacle, I let the green dress out of my grasp...I think. It's all really cloudy these days.

Suffice it to say that I had the green dress, then I didn't, and now I have it again.

More later.

Sorting Out A Few Things

I have always been a live-and-let live person, especially where it concerns my sister, whom I have seen rarely once we were out of college. I have never thought about how she might be living her life. My own has always been plenty for me to handle.

I have always liked and admired the homes that Siss has created for herself, except for the smoky dungeon she shared with The Rag before the breakup. That was horrible, but I love the little house she has in New Providence, with its jewel-toned furniture, comfy back porch, and procession of clopping horses going by. She also had a cute place in Easton, PA. It was a large apartment that covered the second story of an older house, and I remember visiting her there when I was still in undergraduate school and she was newly married (for the first time). My boyfriend (who later became my first husband) and I stopped at a roadside stand and bought a gift to take along to Siss' place; an enormous milk-fed pumpkin that easily measured three feet in diameter. We suggested that they coat it with polyurethane and use it as a cute chair or footstool. None of the four of us knew anything about milk-fed pumpkins, what was inside them, or how all that milk might affect the process of decay. About two weeks later, Siss called me at school to inform me that she had sat down on the pumpkin, only to have it turn to mush and implode beneath her, at the same time releasing a noxious liquid in great quantity. This liquid saturated her new wool area rug, made its way across the kitchen, and flowed out the back door and down the stairs to visit the neighbors, who were also her landlords. Oops!

Siss and this same husband, who was an urban planner, later bought a cute little house in Moorestown, New Jersey, right across the bridge from Philadelphia. Siss fixed this one up beautifully, too. I always envied her ability to "nest". She did it well.

At this time I was living in New York City and had married the boyfriend from the pumpkin disaster. He and I both had begun Orgone therapy with the wonderful Dr. Schwartzman, whose office was in Philadelphia. Each week, we would get home to Brooklyn from working/dancing in Manhattan, change clothes, and leave for Philly. We ate convenient-store ham sandwiches while we gassed up on the way, and got to Philly for our back-to-back 8PM and 9PM therapy appointments. After therapy, we stopped at Dunkin Donuts for a "bucket of munchkins" and headed for Moorestown and that cute little house where my sister and her husband lived. We shared the munchkins, which were doughnut holes in several flavors, among the four of us before we headed back to Brooklyn at 2 or 3 in the morning. This went on for years, until Siss got divorced and the house was sold.

Back to the point. I am very live-and-let-live. I never loved and then hated Siss. I never admired and then vilified her way of life. I never even noticed the way she dressed or styled her hair. I never commented on her life-choices.

Maybe all this going with the flow left me open to be loved/hated and admired/vilified by her. I learned some very valuable things about the human condition while I was in therapy. One of those things is that people often lash out at others who have what they themselves want but are too afraid to reach for. This is an emotional plague reaction. It is a hatred of the life and happiness in someone else because of a fear of reaching for that life and happiness.

What does this have to do with all those cute little houses and all that nesting? Well, Siss always wanted a more adventurous and "artistic" way of life. She wanted to be a writer, and actually got a degree in English, but later gave up an editorial position to go back to nursing school. I am living in a converted warehouse on an organic farm in the middle of a big city, surrounded by museums and galleries and theatres. I achieved my dream of becoming a dancer, and that is how I make my living. She reveled in this way of life, loved visiting the warehouse, having Thanksgiving dinner at the local Vietnamese restaurant, going to the butterfly garden at the Natural Science Museum. Then, when I got flooded, she turned all moralistic and said, "it wouldn't be ME living that way"! And....when Hurricane Ike hit Houston and made national news, she never even called me. All part of the old "I told you so". You know, I would never have lived in the cozy little places she has inhabited, but the important thing is that I would never have thought of saying this to her. We all have the right to live the way we want to live, and the way that makes us comfortable.

What did I want to sort out here? Just one very basic thing that separates me and Siss. I believe in living my life exactly as I please as long as I hurt no one else. I also believe that I do not have the right to comment on how anyone else lives his/her life unless I am asked. Siss, on the other hand, feels free to sling off at me about my life, and it is always disguised as "what is best for me". This disguise is another dead giveaway that the emotional plague is at work. Siss has become very moralistic and self-righteous where I am concerned ("it wouldn't be ME living that way"). I should really say "had become", because there is no present tense for us any more.

That Party

The party at which Siss put out a restraining hand to stop me from dancing is my only memory of the seventh grade, outside of being ridiculed by a male classmate (name withheld) for having hairy legs. You see, I was a very late bloomer, and was not allowed to do things like wear makeup and shave my legs at the age of twelve. I was a Catholic school girl who appeared every weekday in a green jumper with a white blouse, a green tie and socks-and-shoes. You can be sure that the very next time I appeared at school after the "hairy legs" comment, I had clean-shaven legs and lots of little dots of toilet paper stuck to them with my dried blood. One more step on the way to puberty.

Ah, puberty. Girls reach puberty much sooner now than I remember, but I am sure that I am mistakenly judging all other women by my own experience. I didn't get my period until I was seventeen, for lord's sake! In retrospect, I don't think I am exactly the norm. Anyway, in the seventh grade I was a child, five years from puberty, and I didn't understand boys and dating and leg-shaving. I still wore my hair in a ponytail.

Back to the party. If I was twelve and in the seventh grade, Siss was fifteen and in the tenth grade. There were light years between us. She had gotten her period at twelve like everyone else, and she wore her hair in a "bubble cut", the 1960's "Shirelles" do that had to be teased and lacquered and covered with a scarf just to get to school in one piece. I remember leaving Grandma Lavina's house for school with Siss, and she would ask me every five seconds, "does my hair look alright? Does it look the same as when we left the house?" Of course, I couldn't see it under the scarf, but I dutifully told her "yes" and plodded on, ponytail bobbing.

Again, back to the party. It seems to me that it was a birthday party for one of Siss' friends, maybe even her boyfriend. I thought that he was cute, and his name was Carl-something-Slovak with a last name that sounded like a sneeze. Heaven only knows why I had been invited, but there I was. The party was at my Aunt Kaye's house on Woodlawn Street in Scranton, in a part of the city known as "the hill section"....appropriately. The houses faced a street that was on such a steep incline that they appeared to be leaning to the side. Aunt Kaye was only ten years older than my sister, being twenty years younger than my father. Such are Irish Catholic families.

I was feeling really energized that evening. The music was turned up and there were many teenagers dancing "The Twist". I was very good at The Twist. I am sure that Chubby Checker would have been proud. I was wearing my "Twist blouse" that night. You had to wear a Twist blouse to make the Twist look authentic, just as you had to wear a Ben Casey shirt with a buttoned neckband to look like one of the in-crowd. A Twist blouse was usually white, and fell to mid-hip. It had long sleeves, and around the cuffs and the hip line were bands of ruffles. These bands showed off the gyrations of the dance called "The Twist".

I could Twist better than anyone there, probably a harbinger of my future career as a professional dancer. I knew all the moves, and even made up some of my own. I was just at the apex of my Twist performance, when a harsh, restraining hand was clamped on my shoulder by my sister, and I was edged off the dance floor.

Did it hurt me? Why do you think that I still remember the moment like it was yesterday? I didn't understand it then, but I do now. That uninhibited dancing is why she runs from me now, why she borrowed my green dress, why she wants to be me, and why she detests me.

Is There More To The Story?

Yes, there is much more to the Green Dress Diaries. There are stories to be fleshed out, added to and post-scripted. There are moments to be pondered, such as....why on earth did my sister stop me from dancing at that party when I was in the seventh grade? By the way, I was wearing my twist blouse at that party; very spiffy.

I have never regretted sending that letter, and do not ever intend to break my resolve about its finality. The chapter is indeed closed, and my future with Sig looks very bright indeed. The burning question of what on earth to do with The Wet Rag in social situations is now rendered irrelevant.

After many years, I am no longer teaching for that college. I am writing this with the hopes of turning it into either a book or a play. Which do you think?

The blog will go on tomorrow.

Things Come Full Circle

In the morning, things seemed back to normal as we packed our things to leave. We ate what the hotel called a "Continental Breakfast" in the lobby, enduring the dishwater coffee and powdered eggs as best we could. We packed her mint green Volvo wagon and headed down I-81 to Lancaster County. Nothing but pleasantries passed between us, and I was thinking that this was the wall that was beginning to solidify and shut us off from each other forever. It was a relief. I saw the same scenery, the same huge conifers, maples, and broad-leafed oaks, the same old homes and stores, but they were not fresh anymore. I wanted to go home.

On our last night in New Providence, I did not have to endure The Wet Rag. We got in late, leaving no time for anything but a hasty dinner and bed. I was tired, as I had not been tired in a long, long time. It was an emotional exhaustion, the kind that makes your eyes burn and yet refuse to close.

On the last morning, I found that I could not get everything into my suitcase, and it was much too early to go to the post office and mail things back to Houston. Siss told me that I should leave the vase and poster from the Everhart Museum with her, and she would mail them to me in the next couple of days. I, in my turn, promised to send her a leather coat, two pairs of leather demi-boots, and a leather makeup bag that I had said she could have. The leather coat was new, and much too heavy for Houston weather. The boots were gifts that Sig had ordered for me online, and the order had been sent in duplicate by mistake. The makeup bag was from Cole Haan, and was something that the adorable Sig had bought in several colors. This was about a thousand dollars worth of stuff, and I was very happy to pass it on and give it a good home. On the way down the stairs at Siss' house, I brushed past the green dress, feeling a sense of loss and hoping that I would see it again. This was the later part of August.

Back home in Houston, I immediately had to return to the college for in-service week. Translate this as endless meetings that accomplished nothing, and listening to reports from people that I don't respect. It has little to do with students, especially since my cell 'phone number is printed in the course schedule and they can reach me at any time, regardless of my presence on campus. The point is, I forgot about the drama of the sisters' weekend and slipped gratefully into my double routine of dancing and avoiding committee work. I did, however, send the promised "goodie box" to Siss, and was actually very excited at being able to give her such nice things. Circumstances in my life have not always been this good. Sig was a gift from the Universe, and he knows that I love sharing the largesse as much as he does.

There was no response for about a week, and then it was like a cold shower bath had suddenly fallen on my unsuspecting head. My sister wrote me a curt, frosty note saying that she had gotten the box, would use the coat, and "we'll see" about the boots. No "thank you", no delight, no nothing. What she did say was that my vase would "cost more to send than it is worth", ergo she wasn't going to send it. P.S.....she never sent the poster, either. No big deal? No big deal? Well, yes it was, and I had just had my first picture of how tit-for-tat doesn't always work for tat. I responded to her, saying that she could keep the vase, and think of me every time she filled it with deadly nightshade.

I signed off.

Fast forward an entire year. I had earned myself a sabbatical leave from my job, and was planning to spend the fall semester immersing myself in dance in New York City, performing, and creating some new works. I started thinking about the green dress and how much I wanted to have it back. Did I want to work with it? Use it as a costume? A prop? I didn't know, but I knew that I wanted it badly enough to ask for it.

So I sort of lied, told the story of recreating the solo, and offered to send Siss the money for the postage to return the dress to me.

I waited.

Soon, this chirpy little bread-and-butter e-mail arrived, telling me that I did not have to pay for the postage, and how sorry she was that she missed me at the Princeton lecture (which I went to without telling her I was going....duh!). She acted as if everything was hunky-dory, and we would just pick up where we left off.

Not hardly. I waited until I had the dress in my hands.

The note had finally made me take a hard look at the pattern of a lifetime. Siss was the approach-and-run part and I was the rock-steady-take-anything part. She got to call all the shots.She dictated when we could talk, when we could see each other, when we needed to be far apart. This was not my style, and it finally occurred to me that there was something very wrong with Siss, not with me. I was merely the enabler. She was feeding her own needs, ignoring mine, and fully expecting that I would act as if there were nothing wrong with the arrangement.

I decided to act, to cut the cord. Knowing that I had my green dress safely home helped me to make the break, and I did. The letter that I hastily penned that night, and sent without hesitation, without salutation, and with a check for the postage for the green dress taped to the top....that is the letter that is reprinted in the very first post of this blog.

Last Evening in Scranton

The sight of my sister squeezed into one of my leotards (she forgot to bring a bathing suit) was almost as bad as the naked bonding scene. When things are too tight, the excess flab squishes out unappealingly around all the pressure points; butt, armpits, back....you get the picture. I know that Siss felt rather uncomfortable in my camisole leotard, for she dropped her towel on a plastic chair and virtually sprinted for the jacuzzi. I was really afraid of one of those slip-and-fall-and-crack-the-skull incidents that you read about in the large-print Readers Digest. Not that I ever read those things except when I am getting an oil change. My mechanics have a bookkeeper who is sweet, elderly, and probably vision-impaired. Why else would a bunch of alpha-male grease monkeys keep large-print Readers Digest?

We settled into the jacuzzi for a wallow-cum-chat, since we had found out the hard way that the pool was kept at what felt like a constant sixty degrees. It really reminded me of my days living in San Francisco. Better I should have wrinkled fingers than blue lips. The chat was probably about family, but I remember most clearly that my sister was so uncomfortable with her body that neither she nor I could concentrate on anything else. She moved from one jet to another, carefully positioning her thighs for minimum exposure, like the old modeling schools taught you. Come to think of it, like the new modeling schools teach you, too. I had to periodically jump up on the rim and just dangle my legs in order to cool off, but she wouldn't get up with me so consequently looked faintly boiled, like a shellfish in the pot. As much as she gushed on about how great the sisters' weekend was, I couldn't help but notice that she was trying out a real relationship and wasn't feeling very positive about it. Besides this, whatever I had eaten for dinner had had onions in it, and I was suffering from bad breath and a case of the belches. I was one up on my sister, being uncomfortable for two different reasons. Or maybe more.

On this trip, it had hit me like the proverbial bolt from the blue that my sister is, was, always had been, and always would be afraid of every damned thing in life. She was afraid to wear tampax, or contact lenses. What, was she afraid they were going to get lost in there? She was so afraid of the symptoms of menopause, the hot flashes and the night sweats, that she insisted on wearing the hormone patch on her arm....for five years! She lost a breast to cancer because of it. And this is a nurse, already!

Siss is still the best of buddies with The Wet Rag because he is a convenient excuse for her NOT to go out and look for a decent man who would treat her right. This is not merely conjecture on my part; she told me so herself. She has been in therapy for forty-odd years, and just uses it as a wall to put up in front of the world to show how hard she is working at things in her life. She was, and is, in freaking stasis, and here I was in the jacuzzi of the used-to-be-Sheraton watching her hide her thighs and pretending to trade small talk with her. Visualize the emperor's new clothes. I had had it! I could feel the truth bubbling to my lips, and I knew for certain that this was probably the last sisters' weekend of my life. I was going to spill my guts that night, like it or lump it.

We sort of had it out that night, although I was more diplomatic and tactful than I thought I would be, considering my lack of vigorous exercise.

Surprisingly enough, Siss led off, jockeying for position like a chess master making the opening move. I think that she sensed what was coming,for she attacked immediately, hissing that Te Rag "had a problem" with me. She further stated that he felt that I didn't ever listen to him, I didn't "hear" him. Well, this was true, especially since The Rag rarely had a word to say for himself to anyone. Instead of spilling my guts right there, I merely pointed out that, as an adult, if The Rag had something to say to me, he needed to be a big boy and do it himself.

Her jaw dropped. She never expected that her little sister could summon such moxie, especially where it concerned such a sacred cow as The Wet Rag! Caught off guard by me for probably the first time in her life, Siss admitted to me that this was true. She admitted that she was "just afraid" of leaving him and launching out on her own. What she didn't say, and what I knew was true, was that The Rag had never told her of any problem with me. She was the one who had the problem with me as concerned The Wet Rag, and she just couldn't summon the guts to say so. She told me that she "just wanted us to be a big, happy family", entirely omitting the part where The Rag had ended their cohabitation as man and wife. Who wants to be family with the likes of that?

Our relationship was unraveling like an old sweater sleeve, showing all the frazzled yarn and dust motes of forty years.

We were terribly polite to each other on that last night, acting as if nothing had happened, each aware of the tension that hung heavy in the Scranton air. We drank the wine, watched a movie, prepared for bed. We were both sisters and strangers, and I was beginning to see which I preferred.

Last Day In Scranton

This was our last day in Scranton (the whirlwind tour), so we decided to spend the afternoon at the Everhart Museum in Nay Aug Park. These are the things that I remember about the Everhart Museum from my childhood: first: the most ghoulishly compelling display for all the kids was a Native American mummy, bound into the fetal position and tastefully lighted in a glass case. These days, that is considered not only politically incorrect,but morally wrong, tasteless and offensive to both the viewer and the Native American population. Needless to say, the exhibit has been removed and, I hope, respectfully reburied. How do I know it is not there? It was the first thing that I went to look for when we got inside the museum. Fools!

Second: there was a small room dedicated to rocks that glowed in the dark when you pushed a button that bathed them in some spooky light. Today, I have solved the mystery behind this phenomenon, and the rocks just weren't doing it for me anymore.

Third: there was another, larger room full of stuffed birds from all over the world, some with their nests filled with pathetic little eggs that would never hatch. I always liked the Baltimore Oriole best, because that hanging nest is a marvel of engineering. I liked the seagull least, because I have been pooped on by seagulls many times, and it is messy. I also think it is quite intentional on the part of the gulls.

Fourth, and by no means least: in the basement there is a glass-enclosed beehive, in which you can watch all the different bees doing their various things, even the fat queen. There is access to the outside for the bees to pollinate flowers and collect honey. I have actually found this exit/entrance from the outside of the museum. The bees around the opening were much too busy and smugly satisfied to pay any attention to me.

On this particular visit, we saw all of the above-mentioned attractions (except the mummy, of course), and then succumbed to my sister's favorite saying, "So many gift shops, so little time". We spent a good half hour in the museum shop, both looking at the merchandise (surprisingly nice), and talking to the staff about the changes in the place since we had last seen it. I came away with a happy heart, a poster of the museum's facade, and a tall glass vase that I just couldn't resist. You might remember these items from my final letter to Siss.

Back at the used-to-be-a-Sheraton, we had a very nondescript dinner accompanied by some equally nondescript wine. That was okay. We had the good stuff up in the room, courtesy of the spectacular liquor store across the street. I had even snagged a few of those little airline bottles full of things to later enhance our coffee. Rather than endure dessert, which was probably as nondescript as the rest of the food, we decided to get changed and hit the pool/jacuzzi, both of which were indoors, thank heaven.

At Lake Scranton

The parking lot for the reservoir is elevated and flush with the road that inclines past the lake and into the Pocono Mountains. From the lot, it is necessary to crash through some bushes and walk down to the hiking/running loop on the aforementioned glacial rocks and a carpet of pine needles. Pennsylvania's state tree is the Eastern Hemlock, and these majestic trees abound around Lake Scranton. The Eastern Hemlock is an evergreen tree that lays down its discarded needles year after year. Everyone calls them "pine needles" because if they said "hemlock needles", no one would know what they were talking about.

We were about halfway down to the lake when the first squirrel discovered us. His friends weren't far behind. I had remembered from years past that it was wise to bring an offering of nuts, but now I was not so sure. I think that the many years of these offerings had programmed something into the DNA of the wildlife there. Nothing had prepared me for how the situation had escalated. I was glad that I had brought two bags of nuts.

I am familiar with how Disney movies go. I have seen dozens of them. They almost all include woodland creatures like mice and birds and squirrels and chipmunks. The accompanying music is haunting, and all the heroines can sing beautifully and have waists the size of a Barbie doll's. Yeah, I can sing, and quite well. When I was eight, I used to practice being a Disney heroine at my Grandma Lavina's house. Next door to her, the owner's younger brother, Corbett (Corby) Jennings, used to mow their considerable lawn. Being totally smitten with Corby, who was at least twenty, I would walk up and down grandma's sidewalk, singing Disney tunes in my sweetest voice. This was supposed to put the come-hither on Corby, just like in the movies. Since he was operating a lawn mower, it is highly unlikely that he ever heard my paeans to love. I generally got tired of pouring my heart out and retreated to the coal chute, where I would pick out a nice piece of anthracite to draw a hopscotch on the walk. So much for young love. I do not, however, sing to roving squirrels, and on this particular day I was practically running from them. There was no accompanying score except for our laughter, and at every step on the way down to the lake shore, the rustling foliage seemed to bring out a new and hungry face. The chipmunks were undoubtedly the cutest, and tended to come in clusters. They followed me and Siss at a safer distance than the bold little squirrels, but would quickly gather when we paused, their eyes fixed on the paper bags.

The walk around the reservoir began rather slowly, for the chipmunks and squirrels were so cute that we stopped every five yards to turn and give them some nuts. Cheeky devils! I'll bet this is why they gather at the parking lot; fresh victims with bags of goodies. They would stay until their tiny cheeks were filled to the bursting point and then hobble off to deposit the booty and return for more. As we made our way down the path, one group would drop off and immediately be replaced by another. Siss and I had to start rationing the nuts, or we would never have made it around the entire loop without riot gear. At one point we even met a deer, grazing unworried at the side of the path. She accepted her portion of peanuts as her due and ate them, shells and all, as we walked on. Disney himself could never do better than this! These creatures have known for many generations that they are safe here. There is no hunting permitted on this protected land, including the surrounding watershed. The only visitors are those like ourselves, who come for a breath of fresh air and some exercise, and always bring food offerings.

We passed runners and walkers, parents with strollers, dads and sons, old buddies shuffling along in the dappled light. We stopped at the elevated stone viewing platform to look out over the entire lake and watch the tiny fishes sticking safely to the shallow water that lapped the rocky shore. I don't remember what we talked about, but it was a time of remembering for us both. I did not come to Scranton as often as Siss did, but I am sure that she did not visit these nostalgic places on a regular basis. We had taken this same walk on the weekend of Cella's memorial, when we talked about our mother and how we would always miss her presence. It had been more than six years since that day, and I did still think of Cella every day, and missed her on that walk.

I was very aware of the fact that, had Siss not been with me, I would have run the three-plus miles around the lake. That is one of the great differences between us, and always has been. I am kinetic, she is motionless. I run, she strolls. When we go to the gym together, I can see that she follows a routine that is familiar and easy for her. She never breaks a sweat, and her hair stays neat. She shows no muscle tone in her slightly overweight body. Therefore, when we are together, the fleet moves at the speed of the slowest ship. We walked around Lake scranton.

I really needed that run, the one that I wasn't getting. The days of physical immobility, the Wet Rag, the food, my sister organizing us like a tour guide; all these things had me wound very tightly and I wanted so very badly to "scream and run". I controlled myself and walked on amid the throngs of runners, walkers, and wildlife.

It has often occurred to me that it is so my fault to allow this "all about me" behavior and politely subjugate myself to my sister's "needs". For more than forty years, I had allowed her to come into and go out of my life as she saw fit. Sometimes she needed to run, and always did so nastily so that I wouldn't be tempted to follow. I let her run and I let her come back, sometimes years later, as if nothing had occurred. I think that I did this because I always saw exactly what made her tick. I understood her fears and her backing away from life and her retreat into therapy. As a result of this understanding I grew a very long fuse and let it burn. Somewhere on the shores of Lake Scranton, the fuse began to get very, very short. There were warning signs that I was about to open my big mouth and let fly a reaction to the crap of all those years. Yet I walked on, threw my peanuts, and laughed in the sun at things that weren't even funny.

Chick's Diner and The Beginning of The End

Siss always gets up early to do her ablutions and have coffee nuked in the microwave, and since there was no microwave in the room, this means that we got a very early start the next morning. I am no longer a person who sleeps until noon, but I do have my limits as to what time I will rise when on vacation. During the fall and spring semesters, I teach a 7:30 A.M. Jazz Dance class, which means that I rise at five. This is enough penance for all my sins, even if I were still a Catholic, which I most definitely am not. Who wants to be cut from the same cloth as all those pedophile priests?

Once out of the bed, I was forced to admit that this was the very best time of day to begin the assault on Chick's Diner and the "stroll" around Lake Scranton. The heat of the day was still hours away, the air was fresh, and I was armed with several bags of raw nuts-in-the-shell for the wildlife that tends to abound in these early morning hours.

Chick's Diner is an institution among the Lydons who frequent it. "Chick" himself, whose real name is, (or was) Charles, is (or was) the uncle of a man who married into our family. This man is the unlucky father of my detestable cousin who had the misfortune to call me "artsy-fartsy". See how complicated relationships can get in a large family? Anyway, I never even saw Chick in all the years I lived in Scranton and frequented the diner with my father. For all I know, there is (or was) no such person. All I know is that I like the breakfasts there, in the early morning hours before a walk or a run around Lake Scranton. All these things have to be present in order to achieve the desired effect.

In the booth with my sister, I perused the menu. Pancakes or eggs? Toast or biscuits? Honey or jelly? Coffee or tea? Ham, sausage, bacon, or skip the greasy breakfast meat? I ended up asking the waitress for a poached egg, dry wheat toast, hot tea, and tomato juice. Yes, I am thin and I do not apologize. No, I do not really diet, but as a dancer, there are things that I will simply never eat again. I don't miss them. I love the physical freedom of being unfettered by fat layers.

Why is my back as high as a cat's over this? Why do I bring it up now, in the booth at Chick's Diner in Scranton, Pennsylvania? Well, Siss is perennially trying to "lose five pounds before your visit" or "drop a few so I can eat over the holidays", and when we are together, she looks at what I eat and measures it with her eyes. It makes me nuts. She eats doughnuts and whoopie pies and all the goodies of Lancaster County, and I don't think that she understands why I do not. I can't really believe that she equates my avoidance of such things as some kind of anorexia or unhealthy self-deprivation, it is just an attempt to force a sisterly competition akin to dogs butt-sniffing. This being said, I sat in the booth and waited for the Sword of Damocles to fall. I was already thinking of things to say to justify the way I was eating when Siss got around to noticing that I wasn't having butter on my toast or bacon with the egg. She usually remarks on this. It didn't happen this time, but sometimes it does. The problem is that I felt ready to justify myself in order to make the vacation go smoothly. How sick is that!

This scene was like the rumblings of Mt. Saint Helens right before the big blow of May 18, 1980. There were warning signs and ashes in the air, but the status quo had been the status quo for so long that many people thought it would never happen. Then, it blew. Never before had I even thought of altering my own status quo. I was thinking it now, big time! Who was that old guy who had the little resort on Spirit Lake and refused to leave it when the mountain was going to blow? Ah, yes, his name was Harry Truman. I felt just like that guy.

This was the prevailing atmosphere as we left the diner and climbed into Siss' Volvo wagon for the five-minute drive to the lake. Nothing had happened. It was just that forty-odd years of crap that had been piling up was about to blow, but who knew when that would happen or what the trigger would be. The next 'phone call to The Rag? I clutched my peanuts-in-the-shell and slipped easily into enjoyment of the Pocono morning.

More Scranton Memories

I was mollified by dinner at Brenda's. "Brenda" is Brenda Bistocchi, a wonderful woman with whom I went to high school, and whose family has always owned and operated the best Italian restaurant in a city of old-country Italians who really know how to cook. The restaurant is called "Bistocchi's", but I never call it anything but "Brenda's" My entire huge Irish family frequents Brenda's, so I can always get a large dollop of news along with my entree. This is much better than actually contacting my family members, who are not my best friends and mostly have treated me like a poor relation. More about this at another time.

Brenda has also clued me in to the best Italian pizza on the planet. This would be at Revello's, in the town of Old Forge, just south of Scranton. I can get there in fifteen minutes, and it is well worth the trip.

Real Italian pizza comes in two styles, red and white. The red has pizza sauce on it, and a limited number of toppings are available, like shrimp or mushrooms. The white variety is folded up and has no sauce, but is filled with a melty cheese mixture that just may have a little pesto or something in it. Anyway, I always get a box of each at Revello's, and take home what I can't demolish there.

Back to Bistocchi's. I was much tempted to tuck into "Chicken Brenda", a glorious dish smothered in four different and harmonious cheeses, but after downing a Manhattan (to which I am definitely not accustomed), I settled for a shrimp cocktail and grilled fish of the day with, of course, a side of spaghetti. I don't know what it is bout Manhattans; I only have one about every ten years and usually in Scranton, but they are a very pretty color and have a cherry in the glass that my Grandma Lavina Lydon used to call a "Marciano Cherry", like the fighter Rocky. Grandma loved the Friday night fights, sponsored by Gillette. More about this later, as well.

Manhattans are also very filling, so the fish was just fine, and left room for Spumoni.I always have to pick around the candied fruit in Spumoni, like mining for gems except you throw out the gems. The candied fruit tastes nasty, not at all like fruit, and has the consistency of stale gummy-bears. The picking took me a long time, and Siss and I didn't say our goodbyes to Brenda until it was late. It doesn't take long to get from the restaurant to the hotel-that-used-to-be-a-Sheraton; just over the infamous Harrison Avenue Bridge that so many people were said to have jumped off in order to end it all. They could have, too. The creek that flows underneath, Nay Aug Creek, has a very rocky bottom; big, glacial things that look like they would do the trick if you had a mind to cash out. The creek flows out of Nay Aug Park, a Scranton landmark where I used to skateboard on my old, clay-wheeled ride and swim in Lake Lincoln, a man-made lake that was always filthy by summer's end, and where they would let the poor little elephant from the Nay Aug Park zoo come down for her annual swim. The zoo was ultimately condemned and the animals removed, but I was aware of their suffering even as a child.

The creek was a refuge in my early teen years. I could get out of the park when I had no money for food or rides, which was much of the time, and ride my skateboard down the long slope to the water. There I would jump from stone to stone until stopped by a small waterfall. This was a good place to sit and contemplate whatever it is that fifteen-year-olds contemplate, if teen contemplation is not an oxymoron.

Once back at the hotel, we prepared for bed and discussed the next day's itinerary. This would be breakfast at Chick's Diner, followed by the pilgrimage around Lake Scranton, the city's reservoir-cum-running-track. I believe that the wide path around the lake is about three miles long, but if I call this a novel rather than a non-fiction diatribe, I don't have to check my facts. So ha ha, it's suddenly a novel, maybe a novella if I run out of steam, or even a play.

Siss takes as long to get ready for bed as she does to go out for an evening. On this particular evening she opted for a shower, as did I, and we took turns steaming up the bathroom. I emerged in the buff, toweling off my short, red hair and Siss remarked that gee, I didn't look as skinny as I did in clothes, and actually was very muscled. Then she followed suit, walking around naked and loudly proclaiming that she had never done this in front of anyone before....but after all I WAS her sister. I was so grossed out! Nothing like being subjected to a self-conscious, overweight, cottage-cheese-thighed, naked woman who wants to bond. All this trying out of the waters on her part was getting extremely tiring, so I watched the news and went to sleep thinking of Chick's Diner, poached eggs, biscuits, ham, and fresh o.j. This is the stuff of sweet dreams.

Coal Mine Tour

Precisely at 2, we settled into a coal car and began the descent into the Lackawanna Mine. This was not the mine in which my grandfather, John "Sharkey" Lydon, worked, but it was close enough in both layout and geography to give me and Siss a shocking picture of how grandpa spent his childhood.It was so very cold, and dark enough so that the many lights could not see into corners and around bends. Water dripped from ceilings and oozed down walls. Always, there was the knowledge that we were under the earth, and somewhere above, the sun was shining and the air was warm.

There were many children in our car, most of them thrilled rather than frightened by the exciting ride through the dark tunnel. At every stop, they would run around looking for a chunk of anthracite to take home as a souvenir. This is forbidden, but every kid does it. My own child, whom I call N.P., had taken this selfsame trip in the fourth grade while visiting his Gramma Cella, and he had brought out a piece of coal so large that it barely fit into his backpack. He wasn't frisked by guards. No one questioned the staggering fourth-grader. So it was with these kids. The guards simply didn't notice, or didn't care if they did notice.

What really got me was the fact that my Grandpa Sharkey, at this same age, was working in a mine just like this, not just picking up bits of coal for fun. He went down innto the ground before light and came up after dark. He rarely saw the daylight. They had few or no child labor laws in the 1890s.

These are the times when I start thinking deep, philosophical thoughts about my life; halfway down into an old anthracite mine, freezing my ass off and realizing that alligator soup doesn't stick to your ribs. When I looked at my sister, I could only think about that ugly top with the iridescent sequins that I had worn for her sake. Why do I have to be so nice? I could have been honest and said that I hated it, that I wouldn't wear it, that it was butt-ugly. I could have told her exactly what I thought about grown women dressing alike. I didn't tell her that, just as I didn't tell her what I think of The Wet Rag and what I think of her malingering in therapy for forty years. Instead, I told all of those little white lies of which even Emily Post must have approved. I was cold and starving and irritated by all the screaming kids, but I was still channeling Aristotle.

The Coal Mine

We began with the coal mine. This descends to 300 feet below ground where it stays very cold and wet all the time, so I needed to fortify myself with lunch at Cooper's Seafood restaurant first. Cooper's is famous for having the largest number of beers on tap of any place in the nation, and the parking lot is always packed with tour buses. I don't drink beer, being a steadfast wino. The big draw for me here is the alligator soup, a thick, spicy, tomato-based wonder, and the frogs' legs. I am a foodie, so sue me.

I think McDade Park is named after some local politician, and I don't think he is dead yet. I can't swear to this because I haven't actually lived in Scranton since 1968 when I went away to college, but there has always been a McDade in Scranton politics. The name I remember from my mother, a rabid Democrat, is "Joe McDade". The park may be named after an earlier generation of McDades. I, myself, am a registered independent, gratefully relieved of primary elections and two-party squabbling.

Anyway, don't they have a rule about naming parks after people who are still alive? Presidents don't seem to get their green faces on money until after they are no longer with us.

Back to the park. The entrance to the mine tour itself consists of several large parking lots and a building containing a gift shop (coal chunks), cafeteria (pizza slices and french fries), and a small information section which isn't even interactive. This compact appearance is because the entire attraction is underground. Northeastern Pennsylvania was never into strip mining. Instead, they hauled their product, anthracite (hard) coal, and it waste product, picturesquely called "culm", out of great, deep holes in the ground. I always thought that the mining companies should have put the culm back into the ground to fill up all the holes, but they did not. Instead, they made huge mountains called "culm dumps" around the town, and simply left them there. After some years, these dumps spontaneously combusted, and so were renamed "the burning dumps" bu the population of Scranton. On rainy nights, the culm dumps would burn with an eerie, blue flame, and I always thought them quite beautiful. Eventually the mines collapsed, and the culm had to be bulldozed back into the ground. This proves that my girlhood theory was not without merit.

Siss and I had bough tickets for the afternoon trip into the mine, which was to begin at 2 P.M. This gave us time to peruse the gift shop for some of those souvenirs that you end up moving from place to place in your house and finally throw out or give to the Goodwill. I once had owned a beautiful pair of anthracite ear studs, polished like ebony, and I wanted to see if they had another pair. Alas, the current trend was toward ornate, chandelier earrings and crosses made out of coal; not my style, so I settled for a charm for my bracelet that featured tiny mining tools and a wee lump of coal. I still wear that bracelet.

Arriving in Scranton and Planning the Tour

We pulled into the parking lot of the hotel at that wonderful time when there is plenty of time for a few glasses of wine after checking in and before dinner. God's in his heaven, all's right with the world. The hotel name escapes me now, but I remember that it used to be a Sheraton, and not so long ago. So, to me, it will always be a Sheraton. It is ideally situated between two of my favorite "must see" landmarks, these being Lake Scranton and Chick's Diner, and directly across the street from the most wonderful wine and liquor store. This store has an astounding array of those little airline bottles, so you can mix and match your way to nirvana. I tend to be more of a wine person, and they have a good selection of that, too. This is rare for Pennsylvania, which still clings to "state stores", and has the most antiquated set of blue laws in the country, except for the antediluvian places with dry counties. I can remember when you walked into a state store and were met by a solid, intimidating counter, behind which were shelves upon which were displayed the paltry selection of wines and liquors. Now, you can take a shopping cart and browse the aisles, as you would in any other state. You still have to face the state employee at the counter, who still gets paid far too much for doing far too little. This is why PA voters will never get rid of the state stores; they provide jobs as good as those held by the highway guys who get paid for leaning on shovels.

We had two full days to spend in Scranton. What we did there was more of a look back at our youth than it was any kind of mourning for our parents. We had come to forgive and love Cella and Jack in spite of all their flaws in the parenting department, and were more intent on memories that we shared and favorite places we both wanted to revisit. These were: Nay Aug Park, which included the Everhart Museum, the huge Lake Lincoln pool, and the small zoo and amusement park; Lake Scranton reservoir, with its running path and almost-tame woodland creatures, like something out of Disney; Chick's Diner, an institution, and the place to go for breakfast after an early morning run around Lake Scranton; Bistocchi's Ristorante, where our friend Brenda Bistocchi held court and served up the third generation of astounding Italian food; and the Lackawanna coal mine tour in McDade Park, a staple here in anthracite country and a must for the two granddaughters of a man who had started as a breaker boy when he was just seven years old and finished with the "second reader".

The Rag and Leaving for Scranton

I couldn't have been gone more than five minutes, but by the time I popped into the kitchen loking for a promised glass of Pinot Grigio, The Rag was already there, glass in hand. I hate when this happens, and it happens all the time. He never says anything much, just appears, and sits there with a brooding look while Siss and I talk. His presence never fails to set up an awkwardness and Siss never fails to include him without telling me....even on this "sisters' weekend". The last time I was in New Providence I brought Sig along to meet my only sister. We stayed in a great B&B across the street from Siss' house (part of this B&B was the converted apartment where The Rag used to dwell), and planned a glorious picnic in a grove near the old Civil and Revolutionary War cemetery with the many matter-of-fact inscriptions to entertain us. Not quite "died with his boots on" but just as forthright. However, when we sat down on the grass, The Rag immediately wandered away by himself and never said a word to anyone all day. Hence his moniker,"The Wet Rag", coined by Sig that very day.

This time around, I sat on Siss' back porch, deep into my second glass of wine, waiting and praying for him to just go home. I know that he asked me a question, which shocked the bejesus out of me. We were talking about the vacation I had just taken with Sig to Moab Utah, a mountain biking Mecca. I was laughing about having to rent a full-suspension bike because I had come to the famous Slickrock Trail and only owned a hard-tail. Suddenly this voice piped in, "What's a hard-tail?", and I honest-to-God didn't recognize whose voice it was. It was The Rag. It is telling that such an unmemorable question sticks out in my mind, but answering it spared me at least two minutes of his woodenness.

The back porch is one of my favorite things about Siss' place. It is low and shady, opening onto a lush lawn where fat robins wrestle with earthworms. Siss and I have tea there in the early mornings of every visit. We are Irish by both heritage and upbringing, and drink tea with milk, and I use sugar. It is another comfort food for me, bringing back memories of a snowy childhood. These days, Siss "nukes" hers in the microwave in a styrofoam cup when she is leaving for work in the morning, but not when I am there.

On this evening, we finished our wine and had dinner in the kitchen. The entree could have been anything, but the punctuation of those tomatoes and the crisp, curly lettuce, and the blueberries for dessert, made the entree irrelevant. I got what I came for except, of course, for The Rag. To add insult to injury, he stayed for a mivie as well, and Siss and I got no further time together until the next day.

I creaked down the steep stairs early the next morning, excited to get the trip underway. I tried to stay off the middle of the risers, but in houses this old the entire stair creaks. So what. Siss was up anyway, and already drinking tea (out of a real cup) on the back porch in her jammies. What did I expect? This is a woman who makes rounds with the surgeons at 6 A.M. I joined her in my own jammies, jersey pants printed with moose, a souvenir of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and a t-shirt. For once, The Rag was nowhere to be seen. I had said nothing to her about last night, or about any of his other intrusions, because it is her house, but this time we had agreed that this time it was to be a "sisters only" trip. She had actually requested to go to Sig's place on her birthday trip, seeing that he's a nice guy and treats her like royalty, but The Rag is nowhere near a nice guy. Still, I held my tongue, which amounts to a recurring theme in the sisterly relationship; the one that was heading for the skids.

It takes about three hours to get to Scranton from Siss' house. There are many ways to untangle the knot of roads that lead out of Lancaster County, none convenient but all both quaint and beautiful. They all end up taking you north on Interstate 81 through low, mounded mountains and old coal towns with picturesque names like Tuscarora, and not-so-picturesque names like McAdoo (pronounced "Mackadoo") and Scotrun, which Siss always swore looked like "Scrotum" when she saw the road sign. I settled into the passenger seat of her mint-green, metallic Volvo wagon, watching the pastures and cultivated fields give way to the maples and broad-leafed oaks I remembered so well. In August, it was already evident that the seasons were about to change. The leaves looked tired and rusty, the greens having deepened to forest and their size giving them a discouraged droop. In Houston, the leaves skip the yellows and reds and go directly to brown. They tend to hang onto the tree until the next year's growth pushes them off. This means raking leaves in the spring. Well, the rich man gets his ice in the summer, but the poor man gets his in the winter.

During the drive, we talked about our extended family, some of whom live in Scranton. We did not intend to see anyone but each other on this trip, but juicy gossip helps the miles fly by. For instance, we have a cousin (male) who has been in and out of rehab several times for alcohol and/or drug abuse, is chronically out of work but manages to brag about having "bought" cars for all four of his sons, and worked the system to fake disability to support his lifestyle. I know this guy well. He is ten years my junior, being the son of the youngest of my father's siblings, and I used to babysit him when he was a little creep. Now he is a big creep. The last time I saw him, he called me "artsy-fartsy", which made him feel better about himself. I, in my turn, told him exactly how offensive I found him, which made me feel better about the whole world.

Heading For Scranton via New Providence

Then, there was the green dress to consider. It hung in plain sight in Siss' upstairs hallway. I think it was on a coat rack or an old department store mannequin, standing sentinel art the head of the stairs just in case genius should burn. Although I didn't think that this would occur, it felt a little indelicate to ask for the dress back because I was afraid that Siss would do a bolt for whatever reason while we were in PA together. I really wanted it back, though, and it had been in my mind for several years that it was not being used in Lancaster County, as a muse or anything else. I wondered if I were just being a dog in the manger for wanting a dress that I hadn't worn in twenty-odd years. I had, in fact, used the dress for a costume for a solo dance work that I set on a student of mine. That counts for something. I had also told Sig about the dress and how I wanted to wear it again some day. This, I believe, constitutes a witness.

So....there were a couple of inner warriors plucking at me with the result that I did absolutely nothing about the dress and went to Scranton like a lamb to the slaughter. Forty years of the same old song went entirely unheeded, and I bought a plane ticket to Philadelphia for mid-August. I had to be back at the college for in-service week around the 22nd or 23rd, and we wanted (read, she wanted) a good five days of sisterly communion. Once again, things were arranged at her convenience, so of course my flight home would dump me back in Houston on the very day before I had to begin work. But then, remember that it was all about her, and always would be.

Siss had arranged this vacation just as I had done for her birthday trip. She was to pick me up in Philly and we would spend the night at her house in New Providence before driving to Scranton the following morning. I always liked staying at her house because of the fresh farm produce, meat and baked goods that abound in that area. The Amish farmers are very friendly and welcoming, and almost every farm has a roadside stand where they sell fruit, vegetables, breads, and the very delicious treat called "whoopie pies". Whoopie pies are large, soft sandwich cookies stuffed with a filling that is probably whipped, sweetened lard. They come in red devil's food as well as dark chocolate and probably account for the large number of cardiologists with practices around Lancaster County.

Anyway, Siss picked me up at the airport all excited about the dinner she had planned to kick off the trip. This dinner was to be rich in seasonal specialties which, in August, are tomatoes, berries, and assorted summer squashes. I was excited too, knowing that I wouldn't have to cook a thing. Not that I dislike cooking. I am, after all, a "foodie". Cooking is relaxing therapy for me, and I do it extremely well. But vacation is vacation. I intended to be a slug the entire time.

We talked a steady stream for the hour-and-a-half it takes to get to New Providence from the Philly airport. This is the usual for us, as our entire extended family is loquacious and tends to talk one over the other while still managing to understand perfectly everything that is being said. It is a talent we have all developed in order to protect our senses of self, for my father was one of nine Irish-Catholic siblings who produced a whopping total of twenty-nine first cousins in my generation. Siss and I are the two oldest of these.

It was a very engaging conversation. Siss is funny and witty and very quick to play different characters in her retelling of everyday occurrences. Of course, the main character is a nurse like herself, voiced like Lily Tomlin's telephone operator with a harelip. The voice can make even the telling of turning over a five-hundred-pound patient amusing, gory details and all. Of course, any mention of the obesity problem there in farm country must end with a litany of all the fatty foods that abound there, from whoopie pies to some deep-fried cake thing pronounced faasnacht and spelled god knows how.

By the time we reached New Providence and Siss' neat little two-story house, set close to the street and sporting a long, shady, open porch along the front, I was weak from laughter and hunger, but by no means all talked out. I prepared for round two by visiting her upstairs bathroom, its small window propped open with a lipstick and sheer white curtains moving in a late afternoon breeze. On the way down, I paid homage to the green dress, briefly tweaking the long skirt into a liquid shimmy.

The Rest Of The Birthday Trip and Beyond

Sig's house is only about an hour from Buc-ees, in the northeast corner of San Antonio and right next to the hamlet of Bulverde, Texas. I realize only now that I was anxious about this part of the trip because I would be openly appeasing the "it's all about me" side of my sister in front of the man I love....a person of considerable intellect. I knew that the Birthday Girl would act out and I only hoped I could keep it down to a dull roar. As it turned out, I worried needlessly. Siss spent a good portion of her time on her cell 'phone with The Rag.

Sig had put his house on the market, ostensibly so that we can be together, so there was no furniture in it except for his bed and a few leather chairs and couches. He got my sister a suite of rooms at the Embassy Suites, and I was so impressed that I wanted to stay there myself. She had a sitting room, bedroom, and bath, with two televisions, six pillows on the bed, a mini-bar and, of course, an open credit card for the bar, lounge, in-room movies, and anything she wanted from the desk. One of the gifts I had given her was a hanging shower caddy with products from Bath and Body Works, scented candles, and luxury bath items. I also gave her a "room basket" full of her favorite snacks, the kind I never eat, but want to. Watching her sink luxuriously into a mound of goose down, surrounded by birthday loot, my mind tiptoed around the edge of a suspicion that all was not going to be well. In a way, she reminded me of Cella at her most aggravating, always calling attention to herself no matter who should be the center of attention. My Grandma Lavina would have said "like 'Cleopatter'' on her barge".

The Alamo; small, unprepossessing, sterile, a tourist attraction. For the tour, Siss chose to wear yet another pair of my shoes; this time, a pair of flat, gold strappy sandals from Cole Haan. Cole Haan had wisely teamed up with Nike for the construction of these sandals, and so there was a cunning bubble of air neatly placed under the heel of the wearer. On the whole, I considered this a much better choice than the black and white heels. At least Siss could walk more like a human being.

There are no ghosts at The Alamo, at least none that I could see, feel, or detect. The atmosphere of what really happened there has been scoured away by years of tourists' feet, scuffling between the placards telling where you are and what happened on that spot. The room where the women were placed for safety was cramped and sour with the breath of about twenty too many people for the space. I couldn't wait to get out! I was better off in the air conditioned gift shop, where I could see postcards of the Alamo and try on faux-fur coonskin caps. That's my kind of place. I don't know why Siss had to buy so many items for The Rag; she had been on the 'phone to him at least six times a day since arriving in Texas. That should be enough to say "I'm thinking of you". But no. She bought books and a t-shirt and several other things, which Sig, ever the gentleman, paid for. She talked a steady stream of praise for The Rag, even if she had to interject it into marginally related subjects.

Talk about this later. I really have no memory of the rest of the trip; where we went to dinner, the ride back to Houston, the departure scene at the airport. I do remember two things well: that Siss had so much loot from the trip that we had to go out to the UPS store and send a huge box to her house, and that she tearfully swore that we needed a sisters' weekend together in the old home town of Scranton, PA. She offered to make the hotel reservation and drive us there from Lancaster County if I would just get an airline ticket to Philadelphia (she hates driving to Baltimore). The "birthday" trip was in May (her birthday is in April), and she suggested that we go to Scranton in mid August, just before I was to return to the college for in-service week. I was all smiles and gushing mouth noises, all the while thinking that no good could come of this.

I have a long history with Siss, and I have come to know her pattern very well. She is an expert at seeming to be my best friend and confidante, but all the while she has one foot holding the door ajar for quick flight. I just prayed that the quick flight wouldn't leave me stranded in Scranton. What a fool! I had just finished taking her back into my life from the last time she pulled something similar, and I couldn't see it coming again?? A "sisters' weekend" sounded just a little too much like one of Siss' experiments in close relationships.

Siss's Birthday Continues

This being The Birthday Weekend, as soon as we checked out of the Hilton the next morning I took Siss shopping (her request) at Houston's Galleria (also her request). I must interject here that I truly detest shopping, and until I met Sig I had never been inside the Galleria. Even parking there is intimidating to me. When I need to buy something like a gift, I prefer the many museum gift shops in Houston or shopping online. However, by the time Siss and I pulled into the parking lot, I had been there often enough to be immune to the honking horns and rude, entitled behavior of the Galleria patrons.

The Galleria is the largest urban shopping mall that I have ever seen. I know that larger ones exist, probably most of them called "The Galleria", and hopefully they will remain legends to me forever. Our Galleria features well over three hundred shops and a designer row worthy of Rodeo Drive. We were there to shop for some new scent for Siss which, of course, had been another birthday request. I gladly waltzed her down to Macy's, where we picked up both "Lovely" by Sarah Jessica Parker and "Pure Turquoise" by Ralph Lauren. Both of these are scents that I have and love and wear, but since Siss lives almost 1500 miles away from me, I thought it would be safe and not too "matchy-matchy". Siss had actually fallen in love with "Pure Turquoise" at my place, and we had both drifted into the Skyline Grill in a cloud of it. Now I remember that night every time I wear that scent. Isn't it funny how smells remind us of places and events? Sig says that the anti-bacterial liquid hand soap that he uses reminds him of his grandmother's linen closet. How Gothic.

Did I mention that I hate shopping? I do, and with a passion. Remember how, before Sig, I had never once been to the Galleria in all my years in Houston? Well, he lured me there to see the Christmas tree and the skating rink, and reminds me regularly that while we were sitting in a Starbucks overlooking the skaters and sharing latte and gingerbread, I ate all the frosting off the entire piece while he was otherwise occupied. I suppose that I will be atoning for this for the rest of my life. Actually, as I remember, it was well worth it.

Maybe I had been lured by the holiday decorations, but I was really hooked by the regular trips to Jimmy Choo and Dior and Max Mara and Wolford. I had never seen things like that before. I mean, stockings that cost $300. a pair! And I have them. And I have actually broken down and worn them! Face it! My idea of shopping is either online or in a museum gift shop. For myself, if I ever needed anything, Ross Dress for Less was the place to be....or Pay Less Shoe Source. When Siss and I attended Cella's memorial service, we shopped together for something appropriate to wear, and I could not imagine that she went to Nine West for shoes. That was too upscale for me. Needless to say, my ideas of what is "upscale" has changed a little.

But I digress.

So, armed with enough scent to last for years, we hit the Interstate for San Antonio. I must interject here that at the end of the long trip, Siss got too greedy for scent, and tried to take a half-bottle of my Dolce and Gabbana "Light Blue" on the plane, where it was confiscated from her clutching hands. Ha Ha.

The road to San Antonio. Two hundred miles of nonstop gabbing. My sister is a wonderful conversationalist, witty and funny, and with a speaking style that is full of picturesque imagery. We stopped at one of the "destination spots" along the way. This would be Buc-ees, a combination gas station, gift shop, deli and outdoor shop, with the cleanest restrooms in the West. Honest.

Anyone who stops at Buc-ees, this particular one in Luling, Texas, must avail himself or herself of the facilities, buy "Beaver Nuggets", which are corn pops with a burnt-sugar coating, and shop the tasteless western stuff. We accomplished all of this, in the protected, "no tractor-trailers" sanctuary where you can also buy deer corn, barbecue grills so big they have trailer hitches, and Mexican rugs and chimney-type burners. We scored several deals. Thank goodness I don't have a trailer hitch.

Too Much Attention To Siss

The delighted recognition exhibited by the valets was repeated on the 24th floor as we emerged from the elevator into the open arms (or so to speak) of the hostess, the maitre'd, the sommalier, and the wait staff. Sig had told the reservations desk that we were celebrating a birthday, so we were ushered to the best window table, a corner from which you can see the Houston skyline in several directions. I couldn't even watch my sister try to negotiate in those heels, so I walked in front, coward that I am. Without even having to ask, the waiter glided over with a glass of one of my favorite wines, BV Tapestry, a meritage from California that I think is the only wine that BV produces that is worth drinking. , This, from a woman who used to drink Carlo Rossi from a jug!

Siss ordered a Pinot Grigio, and we let the games begin. "Games" is the proper word. She long ago relegated me to the safe role of "little sister", and constantly asserts, jokingly of course, that "it is all about her". Seeing me in my current iteration as the beloved of a very kind and generous man, she sailed through the dinner on a cloud of birthday supremacy. Of course it was all about her, even though I got all the attention. Who cares, anyway? I knew those people, and they were very sweet because they had been oiled with Sig's money over quite a period of time. However, as a talisman against turning into the evil bitch that I can be, I ordered a second bottle of Tapestry "to go" from the delighted waiter.

I had Ahi, which is a comfort food for me, and several glasses of Tapestry, also a comfort food. During the dinner, the sky treated us to an amazing lightning and thunder display. Being on the 24th floor with almost a 360-degree view, it was pretty spectacular. In retrospect, I should have considered it to be an omen of things to come. Lightning and thunder. I was ready to grab my spare bottle of Tapestry by the neck and head for the room but the waiter had one more treat in store. He descended upon us with a ganache-covered mountain of a dessert, complete with birthday candle. It was swoony, and I had a cappuccino as well. Then, I grabbed that bottle by the neck and we headed down to watch movies in bed, having merely signed the bill and the tip to be charged to the room. I could get used to this. The patent leather stilettos barely made it, and were tossed aside in favor of some Lancaster County scuffs. We spent the remainder of the evening watching the passing storm, exchanging sisterly gossip and watching a movie on the charge-it-to-your-room channel. I don't remember what we saw, but leave it to my wonderful Sig to leave his credit card open for all our wants and needs. He really is a prince.

The Great Rift Begins

The Great Rift began with the celebration of Siss' sixtieth birthday on April 23rd, 2007. At that point, we had been estranged for about two years, over another one of her moralistic summations of my life. Then, she suddenly e-mailed me to say that she had had an epiphany, and realized that I am the only sister she has. Well, I have always been the only sister she has, but I fell for the line again and embraced her back into my life. Mistake. You can't keep falling for people's sob stories and not expect to get burned, or at least singed. After a few months of sisterly correspondence, I proposed that I would do something big for her "Big Six-O". Of course, The Rag had beaten me to the punch, so she asked if we could do it a few weeks later, maybe in the first part of May. This was highly unnecessary, as The Rag actually did nothing for her birthday, but we agreed anyway. "We" is me and my significant other, who lives 200 miles from me in San Antonio, TX. Sig Oth and I planned a totally awesome four-day weekend, the first two days in Houston (my home) and the remaining two in San Antonio (his). I let Siss choose the activities, but the only thing she knew about Texas was the Alamo, and was quite excited to learn that it was in San Antonio. This is how America's monument to defeat became the cornerstone of the trip. Ironically yourself.

Sig was actually on to this irony and mentioned it to me, at the same time inventing the phrase "America's monument to defeat." For a computer scientist, he sometimes amazes me with his wit and wisdom. I think it must be the loonyness gathered from all those years spent staring at that gray screen covered in lines of code. Here is a sterling example: after our first vacation together, which we took in the summer of 2005 to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Sig and I were sitting in a little bar in the Denver airport waiting for a connecting flight to Houston. He ordered one variety of red wine and I ordered another. They were both illustrative of the quality of wine that you get at an airport, but one was much worse than the other. When we ordered a second glass of the better wine, the first glass of the lesser wine remained on the table. Sig offered to split the new glass of wine with me by pouring some into my half-empty glass. When I objected to the combining of the two, he merely said "if we put them together, it will make Sangria"!

Pause....long pause. This remark was not funny unless the listener were able to immediately take the necessary steps to understand what composes Sangria and how this could be analogized to the two sorry wines that were on the table. I happen to like and appreciate this type of humor. This is why Sig and I are still a couple and also why I immediately adopted his moniker for the Alamo into my vocabulary, where it remains to this day.

Our first two days were to be spent as a sister act in Houston, and then segue into a leisurely drive on I-10 to San Antonio for the remaining time. Sig had booked a palatial room at the Hilton of the Americas in Houston for me and Siss. He left his credit card open for us to have dinner at the Skyline Grill a very nice dining area on the 24th floor, and for room service, the mini-bar, the spa, and whatever else we wanted.This, since Siss "simply couldn't" stay at my warehouse space because of her allergy to cats. She did, however, manage to come to the warehouse to inspect my stuff and rummage through my clothes, all without even a small wheeze. She also managed to open, inspect, and admire all her birthday surprises, which took some time. I am pleased to say that, during this interlude, Siss managed to refrain from commenting (either negatively or positively) about my lifestyle, my surroundings or the presence of six cats and a dog at my place. This was a relief, but it left me hanging as to exactly where the pendulum was in its arc. Was she in my back pocket our ready to sprint? Only the next four days would tell.

We arrived at the Hilton bag and baggage, a few hours before the birthday dinner reservation at Skyline Grill. I was greeted like a long-lost relative by the valet parking staff, which caused my sister's jaw to drop to her knees. You see, Sig is not only the love of my life, he is exactly as he described himself in one of his first e-mails to me: "generous to a fault". He had, on the many occasions we had stayed at the Hilton of the Americas, been unfailingly generous to the staff, and the valet attendant remembered my car, remembered me, remembered what I do for a living, and remembered to carry me around as if on a litter. Chops to him. Siss was astounded. Her bags were whisked away to the reserved room, and the bellman personally escorted us there. Sig had armed me with plenty of five-dollar bills, and instructed me on when to tip whom, and how. Not that I am a rube or anything, but Motel 6 doesn't run to valet parking or bellmen. After checking out the room and the contents of the mini-bar, which Motel 6 doesn't have, either, and which doesn't matter anyway because the Hilton's mini-bar has really crappy wine, Siss and I decided to use our few hours to good purpose. We took a field trip to the lobby floor, where there is a little sports bar that is open to the lobby and all the passers-by, tucked neatly in behind the fake Dale Chihulie chandelier. I know what real Dale Chihuli glass looks like. I saw some on exhibit at a gallery in downtown Houston. The Houston Press described the show as looking like "a sale table at Nieman Marcus". The sports bar at least had drinkable wine....barely. This is an ideal place for people-watching, as it lies directly between the check-in desk and one of the banks of elevators. Also, it serves a bar snack filled with salted nuts and sesame sticks, two of my favorite munchies. These snacks are great by themselves, but their true usefulness is to make drinkable the sports bar wine, the quality of which is somewhere between screw-cap and cardboard box.

We probably spent a good deal of time commenting on women's butts, mothers who couldn't control their children, men whose belt buckles disappeared between two separate stomach bulges, and outfits from both Vogue and the Salvation Army.

Back at the room and feeling mellow as only the grape allows, Siss began to unpack all the clothes she had commandeered from my place to wear on the trip. My shirts and shoes and handbags were fair game, being either size-neutral or common to us both. Pants and skirts were another matter altogether. Suffice it to say that Ms. Bosc brought her own. They tended to be wide-legged pants with drawstring waists and skirts with a slight bell. I am more drawn to straight sheaths with slits up the back or long, slithery tubes. The point here is that we used to be the same size. Her waist was much longer and smaller than mine, and it always ticked me off that I could not wear her prom gowns. This was probably a good thing, for she favored pink, the color of infant girls and Pepto-Bismal. The worm has turned. Now she can't fit into anything of mine.

At one point, we had considered wearing the same outfits to this bash; a.k.a. the birthday dinner. I have two Wolford pant outfits that have strapless tops and long, elegant, flowing legs.When Siss managed to shoe-horn into one of them, she admitted that it would be "rump-sprung" if she left it on any longer. This saved me from another humiliation like the sequined tops.

I have never seen anyone take so long in the bathroom or pay so much attention to the details of hair and makeup as I saw that evening. Her mascara wand was too skinny and she had to borrow mine. The shade of her eye shadow was wrong for the outfit. I wouldn't know. I wear the same color with everything, and it works for me. She changed tops at least four times. By the time Siss was teetering down the hall toward the elevator in my $800. black-and-white patent leather stilettos (courtesy of Sig), my stomach was churning and my eyes were glazing over. All I could see in front of them was an Ahi steak, very rare. Skyline Grill did this very well, until they unwisely 86'd it from the menu. Also, they used to present my favorite salad in a fennel bulb, which was quite cute, and they quit doing that, too. I guess Sig's splendid tipping goes only so far.