About My Sisters by Debra Ginsberg

mystery to me (what if you have to go somewhere—what are you going to do with all that stuff?). Our parents were perpetual renters. They never had what is now referred to as a starter home. They never bought any kind of home at all, in fact.
    But my parents did have a set of starter children, me and Maya. They had the two of us, and we got the two of them, at their youngest, hippest, and most experimental. We got them in the days when their friends (few of whom had kids of their own) would come over, hang out, pass hash pipes or joints, and wax profound over the latest Doors, Rolling Stones, or Beatles album. We got them very early, when they were still figuringeach other out and formulating what would become their personal ethos. When they wore long hair, shades, and floppy felt hats. In other words, we got them in the ’60s.
    Those were the days when my mother still wore makeup. She was the essence of mod. She had purses full of Mary Quant eyeliners and shadows in shades of gray and black. During one season, she painted a single tear below her left eye in silver liner every day. She had an eye for style, my mother did. She smelled of Shalimar and patchouli and wore little paisley and velvet dresses, snakeskin shoes, and knee-high leather boots. Her clothes were a child’s paradise of tassels, embroidery, and mirrors. During her silver tear phase, she also wore the ankle-length black woolen cloak she got married in, which later became a central prop in the plays about witches and lost princesses that Maya and I would put on in the living room. I would spend years trying to emulate the way my mother looked during that time, but I could never quite pull it off. I may have inherited her good taste but I didn’t get her long, lovely legs and I could never duplicate her sense of style.
    My father was as hip as my mother was mod. His hair was long, but never too long and never in a ponytail. He wore boots, aviator sunglasses, and a turquoise leather jacket. He was rarely without cigarettes. Every shirt pocket he owned seemed to come with its own pack of Lucky Strikes. But he could also always be counted on to be carrying either a box of Crackerjacks or a handful of Bazooka Joe bubble gum because, while my mother was in charge of the passports, plane tickets, and rolling papers, he was the one who always had the treats. He was philosophical about most things and was big on hidden meanings (Maya and I pondered the lyrics to “For the Benefit of Mr. Kite” for years because he’d told us that when we could figure out what they meant, we’d really be onto something), but he expressed himself in a way that was straight out of Brooklyn.
    â€œWould you die if you jumped off the fire escape onto the sidewalk?” I asked him once. I was staring out the high window of the Brooklyn apartment where Maya and I attempted our ill-fated running away.
    â€œYes, you would die,” he answered.
    â€œBut what if you landed on your feet?” I asked him. “If you just landed on your feet, you’d be all right, wouldn’t you?”
    â€œNo,” he said.
    â€œWhy not?” I asked. He didn’t say anything then about the force of gravity or the effect of impact or bodies falling through space. He said, “Because your feet would go right through your head, that’s why.”
    End of discussion.
    My parents would never have considered themselves hippies. They rejected mass movements of any kind, for one thing, and, to this day, they harbor an intense dislike for anything communal. They didn’t go to Woodstock even though we were living close by because they couldn’t stand the thought of sitting in traffic. They same year we went to San Francisco for about a week with the thought that we might move there, but my father claimed the Haight Ashbury scene made him “itchy,” and we ended up watching the Mets on TV from the comfort of a motel room.
    My parents also