A Brown Bat

As you may well have figured out, one of my favorite past times is poking some loving fun at my older sister.

Yesterday I was having a conversation with my that very person, Firnafth. I was griping about the fact that every time I take the Myer’s-Brigg’s personality test, as explicated in the book Please Understand Me II, I get a different personality type. Her answer was to “get a large spectrum by taking the test regularly, say every week for the next two years to get 100 responses, and make a probability distribution of the results.”

L.O.L.

“Make a probability distribution.”

I guess that’s what I get for having an ecologist/mammalogist sibling whose idea of the epitome of fun is going out in the field, tagging mice, and coming back to spend eons making a careful map/chart/graph/list of all the data she collected, poring over it, and memorizing some scientific names while she’s at it. While waiting for emails from her advisor, she’ll sit and doodle some creatures of the order chiroptera – very cute, according to her, especially the ones with crazy fuzz on their heads and weird, buggy eyes.

Now, don’t make me remind you of the vole skeleton in the pizza box, the “barn” that was her bedroom in high school (four guinea pigs, five chickens, and a dog), the insistence that, even when driving on a highway through middle-of-nowhere-Arizona in her car, myself and my friend were to follow the speed limit. The bat costume? One year she made a huge cardboard bug for Halloween, spray-painted a drab color and everything. Leatherman? Always. Wallet? Not so much. Haircut? Only when absolutely necessary. Dragons? All twenty kinds. Throw in some elaborately drawn pencilings of dogs/fantastic creatures/mice, a golf polo, a pair of thick-soled (so she can be taller than 5 foot) hiking boots from R.E.I – the most expensive pair every time, though of course she doesn’t mean to – that set her gait as they are so heavy, an invitation to the next Aikido conference, and a nasty right cross, and you have my sister. Hard as nails and soft as butter she is – you don’t want to get on her bad side, let me tell you.

I recently talked with my grandfather about “writing about what you know.” I know myself, true, but I also know her. Somewhat hard not to, when one has shared so many life-shaping events…

Once when I was about 11, we were climbing some very tall trees in our neighborhood; they were in the university-housing complex next to ours, big lofty suckers that have thick, knobby limbs that are large and flat enough to climb for ages, and a top so large that once you climb into it, you can stand up and walk, insulated from the world, the sounds of the city filtered like the light, falling in specks all around, and the birds and squirrels and scraping of bare foot on bark become all there is. I wandered out on a long branch that stuck out; I was so high up I could look down into another tree below me. Then, I heard a crack, and the branch began to swing, earthbound. Naturally, being a reasonable person, I screamed bloody murder and clung to the precipitous twig with all my might. My sister, ever-ready to come to my aid, swung over, and moved out as far as possible on a limb with slightly more integrity, and, as my perch groaned and creaked and moved in a southernly direction, coaxed me back, slowly, inch by inch, until just in time I was back on solid ground, er, wood. I’m pretty sure she saved my life, or possibly a very large number of broken bones. To tell the truth, I have no idea anymore how truly high we were, but trust me, we were flying in the sky those days.

Those days when shoes were optional and “studying” often occurred in the grass, under a blue sky. When red foxes and rapidly-reproducing guinea pigs made up an entire world, when the bushes could lead one into Narnia. When all the movies were Star Trek and days could be spent on bicycles, one riding and one dragging behind on roller blades. When one could spend their whole GDP for the week on a pack of Pokemon cards, and Napster was more than a myth. When costumes were real, and the unknown everywhere, and a summer day could very well be spent at the public pool, in a contest to see who could tread water longest. When the future was one white canvas, with only specks of speculation, and could hold anything, everything. When we bought all those Saltillo tiles, and carefully pulled out all the ones with animal prints. When we painted our room neon green. When the future was just beginning.