Member-only story
My Mother’s Keeper
Childhood portraits of codependency
The day my little sister was born, I was in the kitchen with my grandma. At two and a half years old, I was very busy unsuccessfully avoiding dropping eggs on the floor and not quite understanding what having a sibling would mean. At the hospital, I ate applesauce from a little plastic cup with foil on top.
A few weeks later, I wondered out loud when my parents would be taking my sister back to wherever they brought her from. And then, I learned that she would be with us forever.
Even when my mother only had me and my two stuffed animal cats to worry about, her patience was thin. As my little sister grew, my mother grappled with how to divide that little bit of patience between an infant and a toddler.
My father was often gone on business trips — so often, that I didn’t recognize him when we picked him up from the airport. Meanwhile, my mother was home with two children, whom I later learned she never wanted.
But things were okay because I had my two stuffed animal cats, Martha and Madeline. Madeline was technically a leopard, a detail that I found irrelevant. Leopards were cats, and I adored cats. It followed, of course, that I loved Madeline.
I pulled Martha’s pink thread whiskers out because I thought she looked better…
